


Some Say Love is a Burning Thing

by paintedlight



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Deviates From Canon, Enemies to Lovers, Episode: s03e14-15 The Boiling Rock, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Past Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, but if you’re uncomfortable with that I’ll give the summary in the notes :), can't forget that one!, there will be a little bit of sexy times eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:40:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedlight/pseuds/paintedlight
Summary: Disheartened after the failed attack on Caldera on the Day of the Black Sun, Sokka is hunting in the woods by the Western Air Temple when Mai pins him to a tree and offers him a trade — Zuko in exchange for his father.All he has to do is trick the Jerk Prince into breaking into the Boiling Rock prison with him. Should be easy enough. Shouldn’t awaken anything in him or anything.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 235
Kudos: 526





	1. PART ONE: The Deal

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a character writing practice, and then I somehow ended up with a detailed 30-chapter outline of a Zukka fic. I don't usually write fic but... I got attached and had to write it! 
> 
> It's worth mentioning that this was inspired by the 2016 Korean film, The Handmaiden, but only in its plot twist structure, and quite a few quotes. It's an absolutely beautiful film, but if you decide to watch it PLEASE look up the trigger warnings- it has a cocktail of them! (And if you have seen it... don't worry, I'm not making Mai into Count Fujiwara. She deserves better!). Please mind the tags in this work as well.
> 
> Title taken from Song for Zula by Phosphorescent, a song I highly recommend <3
> 
> With that, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy it :)

PART ONE

As Sokka trekked through the woods, he kept half his mind on finding the clearing where he’d set traps that morning, and the other on taking stock: his feet hurt, his arms hurt, the joints in his right hand were still swollen from gripping his sword so tightly for— how many hours?

A million, at least. The entire trip to Caldera City. The moment his feet hit land again, to when he took over the invasion and the sun turned black, to when his dad—

He shook his head and took a deep breath, expecting the meditative air of the afternoon to provide some refreshment. But, _spirits_ , the air was humid.

Not refreshing. At all.

And to top it all off, Sokka was famished. They all were.

When Appa landed at the Western Air Temple, they hadn’t even set up camp before Jerk Prince Zuko showed up. And not just that. He showed up with a stilted speech about how he had changed, that he was “good now”— yada, yada, yada— and then turned right around and burned Toph’s feet.

Therefore, Zuko was an asshole. And it was undeniably Zuko’s fault that Sokka was starving.

Between guarding the camp and letting Toph boss him around, he hadn’t laid the traps until after yet another breakfast of dried jerky and Aang’s nuts and seeds.

He brandished his boomerang, grounded himself with the ache of his knuckles and the exhilarating memory of Katara knocking Zuko straight into the stone floor of the temple. How he had stomped off, dripping wet. With a breath of a laugh, Sokka took the final paces to the clearing.

And there it was. The first trap. The red speckled wings of a komodo chicken tangled and flapping in the net.

Meat.

His mouth watered. Approaching slowly, he returned his boomerang to the sheath on his back. A knife would work faster.

He was reaching for the blade in his thigh holster when the back of his head slammed into the tree behind him. Sparks filled his vision, but he could make out the series of knives that pinned the thick fabric of his tunic through to the bark. In the numb of panic, he threw his whole weight forward. The knives didn’t budge. Maybe if he twisted side to side—

“Oh, stop it.”

A slender figure stepped into the clearing. She had harsh bangs, long red robes… _familiar_ robes.

Sokka squealed and jerked forward again.

“You won’t be able to escape,” she said, sounding disinterested.

He wriggled anyway. “Let me go!”

“I’m not going to hurt you, just stop moving around—“

“Argh!”

“Shut up! Why do you keep squirming?”

“Why are you wearing a turtleneck in this heat?”

Her eyes, already sharp, darkened. “If you don’t get ahold of yourself, I won’t hesitate to leave you here.”

Sokka closed his eyes, took a gulp of hot air and forced himself to lean against the tree. This was just his luck. Alone, in the forest, pinned to a tree, at the mercy of the soulless Fire Nation knife-throwing lady.

After a few tense seconds, he peeked out to find her, still glaring.

“Did I—“ he swallowed. “Did I say that out loud?”

She rolled her eyes. “My name’s Mai. And I’m here to offer you a deal.”

“Well I’m not helping you capture Aang—“

“I don’t care about the Avatar,” Mai said, and took a step closer. Whichever muscles Sokka had relaxed poised to fight again. The cloth tugged at the blades.

“I want Zuko.”

If she wasn’t a swords-length away, fury in her gaze, he would have laughed.

“I guess you haven’t been stalking us well enough then! We don’t have him.”

“It doesn’t matter that you sent him away,” she said, and Sokka noted that he should level up the team’s reconnaissance. "He’ll come back.”

“Then he’s an idiot.”

“He’s stubborn.”

Her lips curled into a grin that didn’t reach her eyes.

“And when he does return, you’re going to convince the Avatar to let him come along.”

“Yeah,” Sokka huffed. “Sure I am.”

“You’re going to let Zuko into your group,” she said as another knife slid cleanly from her sleeve to her palm, “and then you’re going to lure him to the Boiling Rock prison.”

“Mai, I thought you said this was a deal.” He shrugged his shoulders as much as the give would allow. “This seems like a lose-lose for the both of us.”

Sokka jerked as the knife she had just been holding lodged itself a hair’s breadth from his left ear.

“My uncle is the warden at that prison,” she explained, “and this week, your father will become his prisoner.”

Darkness pooled around the edges of Sokka’s vision. His dad— there’s no way she was offering what it sounded like she was offering. His knees shook so hard he was sure the blades were the only thing holding him up.

“I’m offering to help you break him out.”

No deal was this good. Sokka squeezed his eyes shut, tamped down the hope in his chest to search for the loose thread. So it was dangerous to break into a Fire Nation prison, yeah, but Mai had no reason to be concerned for his safety anyway, so that couldn’t be it. There had to be another catch. Or something he was missing.

“Okay, back up,” he said, squinting. The sun had begun its descent, orange light filtering through the leaves. “You’ll help me break my dad out of prison, in exchange for taking Zuko there with me? That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. I’ll handle the rest once he’s there.”

“Why won’t he just go with you?”

Mai flinched, ripped her gaze somewhere to his right. Crossed her arms.

“Like I said. He’s stubborn.”

“What, is this some sort of unrequited love situation?”

She whipped back to face him, and Sokka immediately regretted the taunt.

“We’re _supposed_ to get married,” she fumed. “I’m trying to keep him from digging his own grave! You’re a water tribe peasant. You couldn’t begin to understand it, how every night in bed I mull over the consequences of this defection, over the assets we stand to lose—”

Welp, there it was. The money trail. He honestly should have seen it coming.

_What could Fire Nation royalty know about love?_

“—more than you could imagine, Sokka. So do we have a deal or not?”

“Throw in a bag of gold and you’re in.”

“Fine,” she sighed. “Deal.”

“Wait, really?” he gaped as she yanked the first knife from the bark.

“Yeah whatever, I don’t care. Just don’t tell anyone I was here.”

The second Sokka could move his arm again he shooed Mai off and freed the remaining knives from his tunic one by one. The holes in the fabric weren’t as noticeable as he expected— Katara probably wouldn’t get suspicious on laundry days. One less thing to worry about, at least.

Mai cleared her throat, and Sokka straightened and handed over the daggers in a cluster.

“One more thing,” she said, as she hid the bundle in her robe. What, did she have a knife pocket? How’d she funnel them through her sleeve efficiently? And without a bloodbath? And how many—

“My eyes are up here.”

“Sorry! It’s just, your daggers!” Sokka stammered, forcing eye contact. “I wasn’t— I mean, how do they—”

“Stop talking.”

“Yep.”

Mai crossed her arms again.

“Wait at least five days before heading out. The invasion trials have to close, I have to get everything ready, and,” she warned, “that’s more time you and Zuko would have to be undercover. It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous, got it.” Sokka rolled his shoulders as they tingled back to life. “You’re sure he’ll agree to go? We don’t have the best history.”

Mai shrugs. “I know him. He’ll try to get on your good side, especially since you rejected him before. And if he doesn’t, just tell him you have to go to restore your honor. He will understand.”

Without preamble, she turned away and strode back through the clearing, hesitating for a moment at Sokka’s trap.

He flung up his arms and groaned.

The net was empty. Only a couple of feathers remained, dusted in dirt, the hollow shafts stained with fresh blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sokka and Mai interacting was way more fun than I expected it to be lol
> 
> I fixed some typos on 10/1, but there was no change in content!
> 
> also, come visit me on [tumblr](https://paintedlight.tumblr.com/) <3


	2. Saviors, Sleepers, Secret-Keepers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm already so overwhelmed by the reception this fic is getting!! Y'all are too sweet, it warms my heart. I hope you stick around :)
> 
> enjoy!

The adrenaline his body had pumped out over the past couple of hours had worn off. Sokka returned to the temple, bathed in the warm light of golden hour, as a walking corpse. But he wasn’t the only one— with the exception of Aang, who was looping over the canyon with his glider, everyone was lying around the courtyard in a daze.

He yawned as obnoxiously as he could muster, and Katara shot upright.

“Sokka!”

“Took you long enough,” Toph berated from her seat at the edge of the fountain. “Please tell me you got some meat during that vacation of yours. I can’t keep surviving on rabbit food!”

Aang landed on the stone with a thump. “Rabbit food?”

Toph snorted as Sokka dumped his collection beside her.

“I’ll have to hunt again soon, but I did get a couple pheasant squirrels. And,” he listed while arranging everything into piles, “berries I’m pretty sure aren’t poisonous, apples I’m absolutely sure aren’t poisonous, walnuts— you’re welcome, Aang— some jasmine, I think? Some dandelion greens— hey!”

He scowled as Katara took the bag from his hands and stuffed everything back in.

“Get some rest, Sokka,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “There’s a fire pit on the terrace by the Hall of Statues. We’ll wake you when dinner’s ready.”

“Okay, okay, don’t have to tell me twice,” he muttered, halfway through another yawn. 

Katara grinned and pushed him toward the pile of sleeping packs across the yard, though he doubted he could make it all the way there. Collapsing where he stood was a temptation at this point. 

But he made it. Eyes half-closed, he sunk his hand into the soft of the pelt when the wretched noise of exploding rock boomed and echoed through the courtyard. He spun towards the sound. The hilt of his knife warmed against his palm as he squinted through the dust, fatigue forgotten.

If he hadn’t just been toeing the edge of exhaustion, he could have guessed. The unmistakable figure of Combustion Man loomed over them from a ledge in the cliffside. 

Which was wonderful. Just what they needed. But then a second figure joined in the commotion, bellowing with a familiar rasp.

“Stop!”

Zuko.

“I don’t want you hunting the Avatar anymore!”

Sokka met Aang’s wide eyes and sprinted to help move Toph from the fountain. Steadying his hold on her shoulders, he looked back as Zuko blocked Combustion Man’s humongous form and ordered him to stop.

But instead of withdrawing, he shoved Zuko aside. Sokka gasped and instinctively pulled his friends to the ground, covering them as much as he could with his arms as they crouched behind the fountain. And just in time— the blast struck the ceiling directly behind their hiding spot. Shards of rock fell and splintered against the stone tiles.

His ears rung. The ground shook again, but this time, the roar of impact sounded somewhere beneath them. 

A miss. That could mean— 

He peeked over the fountain right as Zuko fell. And as his body disappeared into the open mouth of the canyon, Sokka’s first thought was of his dad. 

Panic and guilt erupted in his chest as Combustion Man turned back to face them. 

Aang charged ahead, wrapped in a whirlwind. Sokka scooped Toph into his arms and ran behind the nearest wall, while Katara gathered up the fountain water in a heap. _Tui and La_ , after everything, they better make it out of this.

He kept an arm around Toph’s shoulders as the explosions rocked them to their bones. After what had to be a lifetime, Aang and Katara retreated from the heat of the battle, huddling low beside them.

“He’s going to blast this whole place right off the cliffside!” Toph wailed.

“I can’t step out to waterbend without being blown up, and—” Katara winced as a piercing crash cut her off. “I can’t get a good enough angle on him from down here!”

_Angles._ Luckily for her, Sokka was a genius.

“I know how to get an angle on him!” He shouted and unsheathed his boomerang. 

Risking a glance around the wall, he yelped as his face was almost wiped clean off. On the second attempt, in an intermission between explosions, he visualized everything— the shot, the arc to a precise degree. Muscle memory readied him from shoulder blade to fingertips.

“Alright buddy, don’t fail me now,” he whispered, and hurled the weapon.

He counted down the seconds, leaning against the wall, and jumped out just in time to catch the boomerang on its return. Surveying the aftermath, Sokka's heart sank. 

Combustion Man was knocked on his ass, but the impact must have not been enough. Sokka gripped the end of the boomerang and calculated his next throw. The metal giant rose from a pile of debris on the outcrop, determination fixed in his gaze.

But then he stumbled. 

Something like a flame shot from his third eye, and before they could blink, an entire section of cliff disintegrated in a peal of thunder. It plummeted to the depths, brown clouds of dirt mixing with the blush and crimson of the sunset overhead.

Well. It was safe to say Combustion Man was no longer a threat. 

Sokka was the first to snap out of shock. 

It was possible that, with all of these ledges and paths formed against the cliffs by the Air Nomads, Zuko could have survived. Some broken bones, sure, whatever. Katara was a healer. He dashed towards the spiny ledge where he had last seen him, praying it wasn’t too late.

The others shouted after him as he crossed up and over the rocky aisles. When he finally reached the edge he fell to his knees, gasping for air, and steeled himself for the sight of a twisted limb or two. A prediction that, frankly, was optimistic.

But only an arms-length away, angled just unluckily enough to make it impossible to climb back to solid ground without assistance, was a mess of black hair. Zuko clung to a vine, alive and unbroken. At least for now— the roots strained from his weight, peeling slowly from the earth. 

“Hey, Zuko!” Sokka called as he reached out his hand. 

Zuko flinched and threw his head back, and the vine swung a little at the movement. His mouth went slack as Sokka met his eyes, very golden and very surprised. 

_Oh._

This close, Zuko wasn’t an enemy— his cheekbones sharp but still boyish, his expression so vulnerable that even with the scar, he couldn’t picture the trademark scowl. Sokka's stomach churned.

He must have expected to die there, alone, waiting for the vine to snap. 

“Come on,” he urged, wiggling his fingers. “I’m trying to save you, here!”

Zuko blinked. He pursed his lips with a grimace before catching Sokka’s hand. They both grunted with the strain, and Sokka’s burning muscles thanked him when Aang appeared to join in the rescue. 

As soon as Zuko’s feet hit the earth, he tore his hand from Sokka’s grip and balled it into a fist. Sokka stared at the side of his face, puzzled. Zuko didn’t even glance over. And he totally could have, it was his right side. 

Sokka huffed. Leave it to a prince to not say thank you.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Aang confessed as he dusted off his robes, “but thank you, Zuko.”

“Hey, what about me? I did the boomerang thing!”

“Listen,” Zuko pleaded, ignoring Sokka’s remark. His voice was surprisingly steady for someone who was on the verge of death only minutes ago. “I know I didn’t explain myself very well yesterday. All I want is to do my part in ending the war. And Toph, I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

He brought a fist to his open palm and bowed deeply. Katara and Toph stood still and quiet behind Aang.

“It truly was an accident. Fire can be so dangerous and wild, so as a firebender, I need to be more careful and control my bending, so I don’t hurt people unintentionally.” 

“I think you _are_ supposed to be my firebending teacher,” Aang said, the awe in his voice unobscured. Sokka jerked his gaze from Zuko just in time to catch Katara’s eyebrows furl.

"When I first tried to learn firebending, I burned Katara, and after that, I never wanted to firebend again,” Aang said, fear bleeding through. “But now I know you understand how easy it is to hurt the people you love.” 

An emotion Sokka couldn’t place crossed Zuko’s features like a shadow. 

Oblivious to this, Aang bowed.

“I’d like you to teach me.”

* * *

Sokka was thankful that, in the end, he didn’t have to try and convince the group (Katara, especially) to let Zuko hang around. 

Mai had been right. He had returned, eager to please, at just the right time to save their lives. That was apparently enough to solidify Aang and Toph’s decision. And it was enough to make Katara acquiesce to Aang’s wishes, though the scowl hadn’t left her face since they returned to the rubble of the courtyard, and only relaxed minutely as she ate her bowl of pheasant squirrel stew under the night sky. 

She sat with her arm pressed against Sokka’s, staring into the bowl. He nudged her with his elbow.

“What’s on your mind?” he whispered, trying not to disturb Aang, already asleep in an atrium nearby.

“I don’t trust him.”

“I know.”

She brought the bowl back to her lips, tipping it until only a few pieces of meat clung to the sides. 

“You’re not going to splash me if I bring him some stew, are you?”

Zuko hadn’t joined them at the fire pit. He had followed them silently back to the courtyard, then declared that he was going to retrieve his belongings from a war balloon, which he had left behind in the woods beyond the temple.

Katara bent water from her flask to wash out the bowl and refilled it with the last of the stew.

“Just have him sleep somewhere far from us,” she ordered, pushing the bowl into Sokka’s hands, “and then tell me where you put him. He and I need to have a little chat.”

“Speaking of sleep,” Toph added from the other side of the fire pit, “you gonna carry me to bed, Snoozles?”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you _run_ to that ledge earlier!”

“Hey, healing’s a process!”

Sokka laughed and turned for the stairs. As he made his way down from the terrace, he could see Zuko sitting with one knee up, back against the edge of the fountain. The weird ache in his stomach flared up again. Sokka ignored it. Instead, he focused on balancing the bowl so no stew leaked down the sides. 

If Zuko watched him approach, the shadows and his shaggy hair obscured any evidence. Nevertheless, Sokka felt transparent. 

He had never been the best at keeping secrets, okay? He was a strong believer that all the information should be on the table, all the time. How else could people make decisions? How could they plan ahead? And it was already difficult enough keeping his mouth shut at supper, hiding his deal with Mai from people who weren’t even involved! How could he give Zuko this bowl of stew if he was also going to lure him to a prison? How could he let him know the stew doesn’t mean anything, that it’s not a ploy to get him to like him, so that he could succeed in tricking him? He just wanted to give him some stew. That was it. And besides, how could he train Aang if he didn’t eat? Oh _spirits_ , how could he have saved him earlier, without asking for anything back? Because he _did_ need something back!

“Uh… hi.”

Sokka jumped. Zuko hadn’t moved, sat a foot away from where he was standing. Ugh, how long had he been standing there?

“Hey! So I just wanted to give you this,” Sokka gestured to the bowl, “some stew. Hope you like wild pheasant squirrel! We also have— ”

He froze when he heard a gasp. Zuko was taut as a bowstring, his eyes shut tightly.

“You okay, man?” Sokka squatted in front of him, setting the bowl on the ground to Zuko’s right. “My sister’s a healer, you know. She’s intimidating, I’ll give you that, but if you’re injured she can fix you right up.”

He brought a hand to his forehead. “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.”

“Thanks for the stew,” he said, deflecting.

“Hey, you need to eat,” Sokka said, standing back up and reaching out a hand for the second time in as many hours, “and you need to sleep. I’ll show you to your room and you can sleep this off, whatever it is.”

Zuko grabbed the bowl and pushed himself up, clearly struggling but ignoring the offer. Sokka rolled his eyes and retracted his hand. He grabbed for Zuko’s pack, but he beat him to that too. 

Mai wasn’t kidding, the guy was stubborn as a gemsbok bull. 

Sighing, Sokka motioned for him to follow and started for a structure off the courtyard that had been the monks’ living quarters.

They shuffled down the hallway in silence. Sokka felt his heartbeat in his fingertips, and wasn’t sure if he should blame the fatigue or the nerves. The combination probably didn’t help.

“So, here you go! Home sweet home, I guess,” he announced, opening the door to an ascetic bedroom, “you know, for now. Unpack? Breakfast, soon? Unfortunately. Um…”

Zuko stood still at the center of the room, watching him from over his shoulder. Completely unreadable. 

Sokka fidgeted in the doorway. “Goodnight, and uh, welcome aboard?”

Instead of responding, Zuko dropped his pack on the side table and sat on the bed, sipped from the bowl of stew that was definitely cold by then.

“Yeah…” Sokka nodded, pulling at the doorknob as he turned to leave.

“Thank you,” he heard right before the door shut, so quiet he suspected it was a fatigue-induced hallucination. Against his own judgment, he peeked back into the room. Zuko, illuminated by a patch of moonlight, smiled softly. Sokka’s breath caught in his throat and he rushed to clear it.

“Yeah, buddy, of course.”

“For saving me earlier, and for the stew.”

“Yeah.”

Zuko nodded and looked down into the bowl in his hands. Sokka couldn’t help but study him for a moment, searching for a sign, some sort of flash of the vicious, irreparably evil personality he had assigned to him since he first landed at the Southern Water Tribe and demanded to see the Avatar. 

He shivered, realizing he couldn’t.

Earlier, when Katara had thrown murderous glances at Zuko as they walked back down to the courtyard, Sokka was inexplicably at ease. He understood Katara’s hesitation, but only from an objective standpoint. The knot of fear in his chest had vanished. So had the heavy buzz of distrust.

This was bad. It was foolish. It could very well be fatal. 

Sokka shut the door quickly and slammed into Katara with a grunt.

“Why are you standing literally right behind me?” he whisper-shouted.

Katara glared at him, poised for a confrontation. She opened her mouth, then closed it with a hint of concern. 

“Why are you so pale?” The glare returned. “Did he do something to you?”

“No! He just—” he sputtered. “It’s just really, really weird.”

Katara squinted harder, then deflated with an exhale. “Yeah. This is all super weird.”

Sokka pulled her to his chest and squeezed. After a moment, she hugged back, resting her chin on his shoulder.

“Get some rest,” she said. “I’ll wake you for breakfast?”

“Oh, don’t bother.”

She huffed out a laugh and pulled back. “Seriously, go to sleep. I won’t be long.”

“Mm-hmm.”

When Sokka drug his feet to his sleeping pack, he didn’t bother lugging it to the atrium with Aang and Toph. He unrolled it in the courtyard, across the first patch of ground free of debris, and passed out on impact.

* * *

Sokka leaped from his pillow, knife in hand, and analyzed his surroundings.

Months of traveling with the Avatar meant sleeping in increasingly precarious locations and situations, and his alarm system had adapted accordingly. A strange shuffle in the woods? He was up to investigate. Unfamiliar footsteps nearby? His boomerang was en route before his vision had focused. 

That night, it was a scream.

He strained to reconstruct the memory. It had been too close to have come from the atrium. And it sounded muffled, like it had originated inside the temple.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he groaned as he flew to Zuko’s bedroom.

He was already at the door when it dawned on him that he could be walking, alone, with no backup, into some deep shit. Behind the door could be group of Fire Nation soldiers, sent to take Zuko back to Caldera City. Or worse— Azula.

But the door was still closed, and the hallway was quiet, so it was unlikely. But he _had_ heard a scream. And if he left a stone unturned, he knew his brain would not let him go back to sleep. 

So when he entered the bedroom, he had not expected to find Zuko sitting up in bed, trembling, face in his hands.

“Zuko?” he whispered.

Zuko froze, then threw himself back into the bed and curled into the blanket, his back to Sokka.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, to give him an out.

“I’m fine.”

But he was still shaking. Sokka sighed, and was about to head back to sleep when he heard a sniffle.

“…You okay, man?”

“I told you I’m _fine_ ,” he hissed, loud enough to expose the quiver in his voice.

Sokka knew he should leave. If it were anyone else, it wouldn’t have been a question— he would stay for a few minutes, crack a joke, rub their back, whatever they needed. He and Zuko didn’t know each other like that. In fact, comforting him would be like fraternizing with the enemy. Which he still was, in a way. 

Instead, without his permission, he asked, “Do you like jasmine tea?”

Zuko stilled.

“I only ask because I grabbed a couple branches when I was hunting earlier,” he rambled, words pouring from his mouth before he could catch them, “and I figured, you know, I’m pretty sure Toph would appreciate this. And now I think maybe you would? I don’t think it will keep you awake, I mean, I’m almost positive it has calming properties—”

“Yes.”

Zuko had folded the blanket down under his chin, and Sokka could outline his red-rimmed eye and puffy scar in the low light. 

“Huh?”

“Yes, I would like some jasmine tea.”

“Oh, yeah, of course!” Sokka scratched at the back of his neck. “I could bring a cup of water and a few flowers, and you could, you know, heat it?”

“That would work.”

“Great! I’ll just go, uh, get that then,” he pointed out the door before all but tripping into the hallway.

Sokka snuck back to the terrace, hoping the walk would calm his thoughts. His mind was like the tide— just as one thought approached, it receded, and was smoothly replaced by the next. He could hardly grab at one before another slammed into his knees. Desperately, he took a deep breath of the cool night air, and tried to collect what had gathered on the shoreline.

First— the scream must have been from a nightmare. He had them, they all had them, so it shouldn’t have been surprising. But it had been. They were on one side of the war, and Zuko was on the other— or at least he used to be. He must have seen some nasty shit too. 

He and Zuko were adults now, yeah, but in war they had never been children.

Second— as bizarre as it was that Sokka found himself driven to trust Zuko, the much more perplexing thing was that Zuko seemed to trust _him_. He had accepted help from him twice in one day. He hadn’t shot fire at him when he’d burst in his room in the middle of the night and, in hindsight, that was kind of a miracle. But in less than a week, he will have betrayed Zuko.

And Sokka was already wracked with guilt. 

But he found a bright side, clung to it. He would be returning Zuko to Mai. And that had to be a good thing! Sure, it sounded like it would be an arranged marriage, and that she hinted at doing it for the money, but she wouldn’t go to all of this effort if she didn’t at least care about him, right? 

Sokka told himself he was right as he hovered over Zuko’s sleeping form, set the cup and jasmine bundle on the nightstand.

Third— in less than a week, he would return to the temple with his father and a bag of gold in tow. 

He thought of the big reunion, of the end of the war, of going back the South Pole. 

He would not think of Zuko.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come visit me on [tumblr!](https://paintedlight.tumblr.com/)


	3. Smoke & Brine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> give it up for some Water Tribe siblings shenanigans!
> 
> this is only half of a planned chapter, but it got so long I split it in half. I'll post the next chapter soon!

By the time Sokka materialized at the fire pit for breakfast, the sun was directly overhead. Aang and Zuko had likely been training for hours, and Toph had probably led Teo, Haru, and The Duke deep into the temple again. But Katara was still on the terrace, driving through a rhythm of waterbending forms with a precision that would be chilling had he not seen that single-minded look on her face a million and one times.

“You seem to be taking this well,” he said, grazing the stockpiles scattered about the terrace in case someone had hidden their leftovers.

“I don’t need your sarcasm right now, Sokka,” she hissed, then guided the water between her palms to her flask before pulling it right back out and into the sequence.

His stomach growled impatiently. He dug through another pile, desperate for scraps.

“Aang will be fine, Katara. If Zuko goes all fiery he can just do his Avatar thing.” 

No food in that pile either. He threw his head back and groaned.

To his surprise, Katara stopped halfway through a form, water splashing onto the stone, and stormed into the atrium. When she came back around the corner, she pelted an apple at his stomach, hard enough to bruise. He scrambled back, affronted. She ignored him and pulled the water up from the ground and back into the stream of movements, so smooth and focused, as if she had never been interrupted.

“He can’t _do_ his ‘Avatar thing’ anymore, remember? And the last time he did, he died. In my arms. So don’t act like I’m being dramatic,” she spit, a tremor giving her away. “And that’s the last of the food, so you can stop snooping around.”

Guilt shot through him. He had stood by his sister through the worst of the worst, but he had never seen her so despondent as when they were waiting for Aang to wake up, praying the spirit water would work its magic. Even when he regained consciousness, weeks later, the dark circles under her eyes never really faded. Maybe they will after their dad’s back, or after the war ends. But maybe not even then. 

“Yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Good.”

Sokka took a bite of the apple, crisp. A perfect blend of tartness and sweetness exploded on his tongue. He hummed. Yeah he could hunt, but _boy_ could he gather.

“You know,” Sokka said, then paused to swallow. He wasn’t going to be one of those fools who died choking on their food. “We could check in on Aang and Zuko, see how training's going. Then we could go hunting together! A good way to work out all this,” he wiggled his fingers at her, “anxious, angry energy you’ve got going on.”

“Oh!” Katara beamed, her stream of water dousing the ground again. “I forgot to tell you!”

“Hmm?” he mumbled around a chunk of apple.

Katara pointed behind Sokka, and he turned to look vaguely over the courtyard.

“The fountain! I figured the steady flow must be coming from freshwater nearby,” she explained, her pointed finger tracing the system of stone waterways until they disappeared into the temple. “I used bending to trace it back. There’s a river less than an hour out!”

Sokka grinned. “Fishing?”

“Fishing.”

He bumped into her shoulder. “Let’s go fishing. But first, we need to check up on those jerkbenders.”

Katara rolled her eyes, failing to suppress a smile. “Don’t call them that.” 

But as they neared Zuko and Aang, who appeared to be doing some sort of breathing exercise, Sokka _did_ call them that.

“Hey, jerks! Mind if I watch you two jerks do your jerkbending?”

Pride swelled in his chest as Zuko’s face reddened. Initially, he assumed it was a blush, but the red continued down his neck until a few veins swelled to the surface and Zuko leaped from his seated position. 

“Get out of here!”

Beside him, Katara snickered. Guess meditation doesn’t prevent outbursts of rage. And Sokka thought that was the whole point of meditation.

“Okay, take it easy,” he soothed, tossing the apple core off of the balcony. “I was just kidding around. Katara and I just wanted to let you know we’re going fishing.”

“We should be back in a few hours,” Katara threatened, all mirth gone. Zuko was already pale, but somehow turned positively spectral. _Spirits,_ Katara must have terrified him with whatever she said last night.

“We’ll be okay, Katara!” Aang insisted. “Isn’t that right, Sifu Hotman?”

“I told you to stop calling me that!”

Sokka smirked. “I don’t know, I think it fits.”

He froze. A wave of horror rushed through him, and he felt his face heat, because the universe can’t let him get away with anything. 

Aang didn’t seem to notice that Sokka had just thrown himself to the abyss, just waved his arm at him as if relieved someone had taken his side. And maybe that _was_ how it came across. Maybe he didn’t just stick his foot in his mouth, and no one took his joke the wrong way. The wrong way, of course, being that he just called Zuko hot. Like, not hot— which he was, being a firebender and all— but like, _hot._ Which he wasn’t. Not that Sokka would care if he was. If he was, it was irrelevant, anyway. 

He thought he had gotten away with it until Zuko locked eyes with him. 

Immediately, Sokka noticed that he wasn’t angry, a fact which helped put some air back in his lungs. More than anything, he looked confused, and a little flustered, which was interesting. He stared, attempting to sort through the flecks of emotion that appeared and disappeared before he could identify them. 

He finally blinked when Katara grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the stairs that led up the cliffside and beyond the temple. Zuko, composed anew, returned to his meditative stance and, rather than closing his eyes, watched them walk away.

* * *

“This is fundamentally unfair,” Sokka grumbled, knee-deep in the river, his homemade spear getting _no_ action.

“What?” Katara taunted, her sixth fish swimming around in the floating puddle between her outstretched hands. “Forget your sister’s a waterbending master?”

He locked his jaw and stared into the water. There was a shadow hovering near a cluster of rocks and he watched it like a cobra-hawk, stood as still as he could while readying the weapon. With a grunt, he plunged the spear into the river and felt the subtle resistance of piercing through scales.

“Aha!” He raised the lance above him, a fish impaled on the sharp wooden tip.

He rushed to the shore, quickly spiking the fish through the brain so it wouldn’t suffer. He whispered a prayer, apologized for the moments of violence, and thanked the fish for its life. His father had taught him that. 

Sokka suddenly felt heavy.

“Well, that’s it for me,” he said, aiming for lightheartedness. He sat against a tree, both hands perched behind his head. “I’ll let the waterbending master take it from here.”

Katara was quiet as she guided her school of fish to the shore and copied Sokka’s technique, whispered her own prayers, kneeled in a bow. The invocations floated through the air, combined with the chirps of birds and rustles of leaves from the woods, hardly audible over the rush of the river.

“I wish it wasn’t Zuko,” Katara said, startling Sokka out of his trance.

He brought his hands down to his lap and studied her. She stared down at the dead fish intently, like she had asked a question and been left waiting for the answer. 

“Are you still worried? About Aang?”

“It’s not that,” she sighed. “There are just so many other firebenders. And it had to be _him._ ”

“Yeah, his track record is pretty abysmal.” Sokka picked at his nails. “No wonder you can’t trust him after all that.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Katara’s disposition darkened, shade by shade, as the pause stretched on. He busied himself, pushed his cuticles as far back as they’d go until Katara sucked in a shaky breath.

“And you _do_?” Instead of anger, fear poured from the question in droves. His brotherly instincts took over, and Sokka crawled beside her on the shoreline and threw an arm around her shoulders. 

“Zuko’s not going to hurt me, Katara,” he promised as he rubbed a hand over her back. “I’ve kind of been staking him out, actually. You know he thanked me for saving him yesterday? And he—” 

He barely restrained himself from mentioning the nightmare incident. That… that was confidential. It puddled in his brain, too fragile to be disturbed.

He cleared his throat. “He also thanked me for the soup.”

“Any decent person would,” she scoffed, crossing her arms.

“I mean, yeah, but it’s Zuko.” He squeezed Katara to his side. “And you said it yourself, after Ba Sing Se. That he’s,” Sokka raised his voice in a shrill impersonation, “ _an entitled, ungrateful bastard._ ”

“A _rotten, irredeemable_ bastard,” she corrected. “And I don’t sound like that.”

“Don’t you, though?”

“But why are you staking him out?” she interrogated, eyebrows raised high on her forehead.

During the walk to the river, Sokka had shuffled through ideas of what to tell the others when he and Zuko went off the map. He couldn’t leave without any warning, or else they’d assume that Zuko had kidnapped him and send out a search and rescue. But honesty wasn’t an option, either. If any of them knew he had planned a trip to a Fire Nation prison, they wouldn’t let him take another step outside the temple. And the deal was clear— Zuko, for his dad. Even if wanted to come for his dad’s sake, they couldn’t. And Sokka didn’t want to deal with talking them down.

He settled on a half-truth. He would take Zuko on a boy’s trip.

“I want to take him hunting,” he shrugged. “A little more manpower, a lot more dinner.”

Katara shook her head. “No, not gonna happen.”

“Why not? He knows where the Avatar is now. That’s the only reason he’s ever had to attack me! And given that I _just_ saved his life—”

“Sokka, no. He—”

“—Toph even said he was telling the truth! You _really_ think—”

“I do _not_ like the way Zuko looks at you, Sokka!”

“He— what?” His hands paused halfway through a theatrical gesticulation, the argument dead in his throat. “How does he look at me?”

“Like he wants to eat you alive—”

“ _Wha_ —”

“—and chew you up, and spit you out!” She grabbed his shoulders, wide-eyed. If she noticed the color drain from his face, she did a great job of hiding it. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Yeah, yeah, I promise! But, Katara,” he sputtered, tongue still clumsy in his mouth, “is that a yes? You’re okay with it?”

The question hung in the air. 

Katara withdrew to the tree line, stooped down to inspect the flora. Sokka followed, searching for patches of moss; they needed enough to insulate each of the fish for the walk back to the temple. Moss was plentiful here, nourished by nutrient-rich soil, and he dug his fingers into the dirt at the edge of the sprawling sheet and pulled it up from the earth, a forest of roots left dangling underneath.

He wrapped three fish in careful folds before he ran out of surface area and passed the roll to Katara. As she bit her lip in concentration, something vital slid into place. 

Sokka knew that if Mai had offered the deal to Katara instead of him, she would have accepted. In a heartbeat. That lingering hesitation he felt, a product of keeping something so important from his sister, dissipated, whisked away with the wind.

“Hey, Katara?”

“Hm?”

“If it _wasn’t_ Zuko, do you think we’d find someone else in time? To teach Aang firebending?”

She paused, then turned to grab a strip of fabric from her pack.

“It’s like I said,” she recalled, tying the top of the bundle off in a bow. “There are many other firebenders.”

* * *

Sokka was grateful for good timing— for the opportunity to sleep until noon, for the feast of a successful fishing trip, for his own foresight to tell Katara he would take Zuko hunting. His past self had come through for him this time.

Because he was heading to the Boiling Rock. Tonight.

Dinner had started innocently enough. Everyone joined one by one, lured to the terrace by the smell of sizzling blue trout. It wasn’t an exact match to supper back home, but the dancing aromas of smoke and brine still brought Sokka a deep sense of peace.

That peace was disturbed when Aang lugged Zuko to the fire pit. Throughout the meal, Aang tried to include him in the conversation and ask him questions, and— surprise, surprise— his answers rarely surpassed a single word. But Zuko relaxed more as the night went on, and the others even seemed to loosen up in his presence.

The sense of ease itched under his skin. Sokka white-knuckled his way through the warm evening, saturated with laughter, hyperaware of the mounting danger of growing attached— of everyone growing attached. He couldn’t watch his friends buddy up with Zuko just to take him away. He picked at his fish, already lukewarm in the bowl, until Zuko stood abruptly and left. 

Sokka figured that Aang had really worn him out if he was heading to bed this early.

He almost choked on his last bite of filet when Zuko reappeared minutes later with a tray and an assortment of teacups, the delicate scent of jasmine weaving through the dying trails of smoke. He knelt by Aang, handed him a cup. Aang beamed, and Zuko smiled back so genuinely that Sokka broke.

He stared at the stones by his feet, watching a family of ant-beetles probe the fissures for crumbs until Zuko kneeled in front of him and silently presented the tray. Only two cups remained. 

“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” Sokka rasped, abandoning his seat by the fire for the shadows at the edge of the terrace. He took a deep breath. Here it was. Sink or swim.

Zuko trailed close behind until they were out of earshot.

“So, what’s up?”

Sokka steered for a pair of columns just ahead, at the mouth of the temple atrium. He couldn’t risk saying anything that could tip him off. “If someone was captured by the Fire Nation,” he asked, “where would they be taken?”

“What do you mean?” The steady patter of footsteps behind him stalled. “Who was captured?”

Like a punch to the jaw, he realized this was the first time he had to say it out loud, since everyone else already knew. They had been there. They’d watched him fail. Sokka made a fist, focused on the pull of his hand wrap against his knuckles. 

“When the invasion plan failed,” he explained, as unable to admit his failure as he was to face Zuko, “some of our troops were taken. I just—”

Another wave of guilt crashed into him, a saltwater burn in his throat. But he _needed_ to know; he would have needed it even if Mai had never cornered him in the woods. He forced himself to meet Zuko’s apprehensive squint.

“I just want to know where they might be.”

He hesitated a moment, then dropped his head. “I… can’t tell you.” 

“What? Why not?”

“Trust me,” he said, voice cold and sure, “knowing will just make you feel worse.”

When Zuko spun back towards the fire, a peal of laughter audible in the distance, Sokka grabbed his shoulder before he could step away. He was warm, even through the robe. Zuko didn’t move. Sokka held on, a supplication.

“It’s my dad. He was captured too.” Heat gathered at the back of his eyes. “I need to know what I put him through.”

Zuko was a statue. Moments passed. Sokka tightened his grip.

“It’s not good, Sokka,” he finally whispered, with the mournful gentleness Sokka had only ever heard from healers.  


He blinked away tears.  “Please.”

Shaking his hand loose, Zuko turned towards him, the worried expression a warning sign. “My guess is,” he said, “they were taken to the Boiling Rock. The highest security prison in the Fire Nation.”

His stomach dropped. Mai hadn’t mentioned that detail.

“It’s on an island in the middle of a boiling lake,” he continued. “It’s inescapable.”

Of course it was. Sokka drug a hand down his face. 

“So where is this place?”

“Why do you need to know?” Zuko challenged, loud enough that the words echoed back through the temple. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing!” Sokka bluffed, then rolled his eyes so comically that it hurt. “Boy, you’re _so_ paranoid.”

Zuko glared. “It’s in the middle of a volcano between here and the Fire Nation. You guys actually flew right past it on your way here.”

Hm, well. It may be the highest security prison in the Fire Nation, but at least it wasn’t back in the volcanic catacombs of Caldera City. That was something. It was enough.

And Sokka wasn’t going to test his luck any further.

“Well, thanks Zuko.” Forcing a yawn, he stretched his arms over his head and squeezed Zuko’s shoulder again as he passed by. “Just knowing makes me feel better.”

Sokka heard Zuko mutter something to himself as he ambled back to the fire pit, but he couldn’t collect the energy to piece the words together. He was already locked inside his head, gears turning, counting down the hours until he would sneak into Zuko’s room and convince him to come with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow... y'all ever realize how much shoulder grabbing goes down in the Boiling Rock episodes? because it's a lot. and writing it out feels shockingly passionate haha
> 
> ps- I edited a little bit of the last section on 10/9. that's what I get for posting without taking a day to let it sit !!
> 
> come visit me on [tumblr!](https://paintedlight.tumblr.com)


	4. Your Shoulder Blade, Your Running Knife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> get ready, this one's entirely Zukka Content

“Not up to anything, huh?”

Sokka was on the ground before he could be embarrassed about the high-pitched yelp that had torn from his throat. His vision swam as he rubbed the back of his head. Even with his pack cushioning the fall, that would definitely leave a lump.

Zuko peered down at him from Appa’s saddle. He must have been waiting up there, arms crossed and scheming, ever since everyone went to bed. Which made Sokka’s job ten times harder. 

Mai had predicted that Zuko would agree to accompany him to prison, eager to get on his good side and prove himself. But then, Sokka saved his life, and brought him stew, and checked in on him in the middle of the night. He might as well have written him an official invitation, in his best calligraphy— 

_Hey Zuko, welcome to My Good Side! Don’t worry, no risky excursions required!_

His jaw tightened. Instead of a mercenary, he had accidentally made Zuko his _friend._ A friend who had recognized his brick-like subtlety for what it was, and stayed up to make sure he didn’t leave the temple. 

“Fine, you caught me!” He threw his hands up in surrender. “I’m gonna rescue my dad. You happy now?”

“I’m never happy,” Zuko muttered.

Mai _had_ given another suggestion, in case Zuko refused to go. If it didn’t work, Sokka was out of ideas.

“Look,” Sokka said, stuffing the scattered items back into his pack, “the invasion plan was _my_ idea. It was _my_ decision to stay when things were going wrong.” He tossed the pack over his shoulder. Zuko jumped from the saddle, blocking him from climbing Appa.

“It’s _my_ mistake, and it’s _my_ job to fix it.” Sokka took another step forward. He was almost nose-to-nose with Zuko— or would have been if Zuko didn’t have an inch or two on him. His expression was un-humanly neutral, so motionless that Sokka wasn’t sure if he was breathing.

“I have to regain my honor. You can’t stop me, Zuko.”

He pushed him aside, and Zuko went freely, as easy to redirect as a stream of water. 

“You need to regain your honor?” he echoed. Sokka hauled himself into the saddle. Hopefully, Mai was right, and it would be smooth sailing from here. 

“Believe me, I get it.” Zuko said with a sudden urgency. “I’m going with you.” 

Huh. She knew what she was talking about, then.

“Fine,” he said, faking nonchalance, “come on then.”

Zuko put his hands on his hips. “We’re going on Appa? Last time I checked, prisons don’t have bison daycares,” he scoffed. “And here Aang said _you_ were the plan guy.”

“I _am—”_

“We’ll take my war balloon,” he interrupted, and strode towards the courtyard.

“Oh, would you hold on!” Sokka called after him. He took the letter from his pack _—_ a quick note to Katara insisting she not worry, that they left early to go hunt and would return in a few days _—_ and slipped it into Momo’s grasp for her to find in the morning. 

The moon was close to full. As he took a steadying breath, he sent a quick prayer to Yue to watch over Katara and the rest of the gang, and raced to catch up with Zuko. 

* * *

Once they were in the air, Zuko steered and kept the burner going, while Sokka lounged against the side of the basket and made Zuko miserable.

He didn’t mean to bombard him with questions, but the silence scratched at his sanity and he was too on edge to sleep. Plus, Sokka was curious. 

“How does your hair grow so fast?”

Zuko twiddled his thumbs and glanced over at him. “What do you mean?”

“You had a weird ponytail when I met you _—_ or, when you, ya know,” Sokka elaborated, “attacked my tribe.” 

Zuko looked down at his hands, shot another round of fire into the burner. 

“But when I saw you in Ba Sing Se, you had short hair. That was, what? Weeks ago?” He flung out his arms in disbelief. “And now you’ve got a mop!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Zuko said. “It just grows. I don’t do anything to it.”

“Hm.”

Sokka couldn’t imagine having long strands of hair falling into his eyes; even when it was out of the wolf tail, it didn’t shield his face at all. Of course, he didn’t have a scar like that, so maybe Zuko was used to a bit of impaired vision. 

He’d actually never considered that Zuko would have impaired vision. After months of fighting against him, it was clear that he was an extremely talented firebender. It was hard to conceive that he was doing _all that_ while adjusting for untrustworthy depth perception and a spotty peripheral. 

Honestly, he barely noticed the scar at all anymore. When he saw Zuko for the first time, yeah, it added to the intimidation, but after a few encounters, it was simply an identifier. But _spirits_ , now that he thought about it, Sokka didn’t want to imagine what sort of training accident had led to such a significant burn. And it looked old _—_ the skin was healed, but left russet and unexpressive. A shiver ran down his spine. To have that kind of trauma as a kid must have been awful.

Burn wounds must be common in the Fire Nation, though. He opened his mouth to ask when Zuko glared at him.

“ _What_?” he barked.

Maybe later.

“What? Oh, I just,” Sokka stammered, giving an experimental tug on the wire rope that connected the basket and balloon, “you know, a friend of mine actually designed these war balloons!”

Zuko cooled off. “No kidding?”

“Yup! A balloon… but for war.”

Sokka leaned forward and peeked through the opening above the burner. Even through smoke, the blaze filled the balloon with light. He wondered if, from the sea below, they glowed red against the night sky.

“If there’s one thing my dad’s good at, it’s war,” Zuko grumbled, adding more flames with a heat Sokka felt a yard away. 

“Yeah,” he jeered, “it seems to run in the family.”

Zuko slammed the burner door shut and turned towards him for the first time since they’d left. “Hey, hold on,” he scowled, fists balled against his sides. “Not everyone in my family is like that!”

“I know, I know, you’ve _changed_.” Sokka rested his head back into his hands and closed his eyes. “Sure.”

Surprisingly, Zuko didn’t retaliate. In the stretch of silence, Sokka mused at the quiet of the open air, how different it was than the constant hum of wildlife that surrounded them during nights spent in the woods, how the increased closeness to the moon and stars soothed his spirit like a balm.

“I meant my uncle,” Zuko countered, almost in a whisper, reopening the burner door. The warm light danced across his profile. “He was more of a father to me, and I really let him down.” 

Zuko’s frown deepened. He turned to face him again, this time with a look so somber that Sokka straightened and nodded for him to continue.

“Listen, I know that you don’t trust me, and I get it,” he said, “but we’re walking into a really dangerous situation. When we get there, you can hate me all you want, I don’t care, but _—_ ” 

Shadows fell over his eyes, and Sokka couldn’t figure out if he was pleading with him or making a demand _._

“— _don’t_ lie to me.”

Sokka nodded quickly, unable to break eye contact. “Okay, okay, I won’t,” he promised, guilt rising in his throat like bile. Zuko exhaled and looked back into the flames, hands folded into each other. 

“And I think your uncle would be proud of you,” Sokka continued, aching to at least raise Zuko’s spirits since he doubted he could ease the tension. “Leaving your home to come help us? That’s hard.”

He grimaced and shut his eyes. “It wasn’t _that_ hard.”

“Really?” Sokka pushed. “You didn’t leave behind anyone you cared about?”

He bit his lip, squinting at the fire. “Well, I did have… a girlfriend.” For a moment, he almost looked relaxed, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Mai.”

His _girlfriend_? 

Mai must have understated the emotional importance of their relationship. Sokka’s stomach soured, for some reason, but he discounted it. He was actually relieved. If Mai meant more to Zuko than he’d originally assumed, his betrayal shouldn’t be received too harshly. Technically, he was doing him a favor.

“That gloomy girl who sighs a lot?” Sokka asked, and Zuko’s eyebrows— well, eyebrow— rose. "You know, now that I think about it, she talked about you once.”

His eyebrow furled. “You’ve met Mai?”

“No, I’ve not—” he scrambled. Shit, he had to be more careful. “It was back in the Earth Kingdom? Her friend jabbed me, and I couldn’t move for like half an hour.” 

“Oh yeah, that’s— that’s Ty Lee.”

Whew, that was close.

“What was she saying?” Zuko asked, pressing a thumb into the opposite palm. 

Golden eyes bored into his. “Um, she said,” Sokka recited, “‘every night in bed, I think of his assets.’”

Zuko startled.

“I mean— your face!” he corrected. “‘Every night in bed, I think of his face!’” Sokka wanted to punch himself, hard, right in the nose.

He braced himself for Zuko, face scrunched up more than he had ever seen it, to fry him to a crisp. Instead, he deflated, crossed his arms, and stared at the floor of the basket.

“Well,” he shrugged, “what about you?” 

What _about_ him? He couldn’t tell Zuko about Suki, not when it was Azula who had captured her. It sat like a rock in his stomach, and Sokka didn’t want to dump more shame on top of him. And he wasn’t even sure if he and Suki were together or not. He just… missed her. As much as he missed Yue. He unrolled his hand wrap just to wind it back around, tighter. 

“My girlfriend turned into the moon.” It floated from his lips, another thing he hadn’t told anyone. Until Zuko.

Rather than asking him to explain, he just hummed and gazed into the starry sky. The fire haloed his head, the blue of the moonlight softening his features. Sokka’s chest broke open, but instead of a sting, he felt overwhelmed with relief.

“That’s rough, buddy.”

* * *

Sokka flattened himself the metal wall, the cold welcome after kicking the totaled war balloon to the depths of the boiling lake, and held his breath. A guard had just left a room with an extra helmet in hand. If they were lucky, that wasn’t a coincidence— it was a supply closet. 

He waited until the echo of footsteps faded before taking a second peek around the corner. 

Clear. 

He tiptoed to the door, Zuko on his heels. Testing the lock, he turned the doorknob slowly. It opened. They snuck in and gingerly closed it back. The second it clicked shut, Sokka tried to not pass out, hands on his knees and forcing deep breaths.

Meanwhile, Zuko didn’t seem phased. The closet was small, hardly large enough for both of them to move around without bumping into each other, but it was lined floor to ceiling with iron shelving, stocked with every size of helmet, armor, shoes. The works. In the dim light, Zuko dug through a pile of burgundy tunics.

“Hey,” Sokka wheezed, still recovering, “do you need a nap or something?” He had slept for a couple of hours on the balloon, but Zuko didn’t have the chance, since he had to man the burner.

“Nah, I don’t sleep much, anyway.” He threw two pairs of shorts across his forearm, adding to the pile, and squatted to inspect the socks.

“You sure? I could keep watch.”

“They should give us a spot in the guards’ quarters,” Zuko explained, handing him a stack of clothes. “Unless we’re caught, we’ll have cots by tonight.”

He shrugged and unfolded the tunic, which looked about the right size. With the movement, the shorts slid off his arm, and he bent down to retrieve them when Zuko’s robe dropped beside them on the floor. 

_Was he—_ Sokka swallowed, mouth as dry as the Si Wong Desert. 

He rose slowly, trying not to stare as Zuko pulled his tunic over his head, but it was impossible. Sokka’s heart beat loud in his ears. His chest was pale and toned, smooth but for a few scars. Not burns— they were long, pink. One underneath his right collarbone. Two diagonal, across his left side. 

If he reached out, he could touch them. 

If he traced them with his fingers, would they be raised, or flat against the expanse of Zuko’s skin? Would he gasp at the touch, or had the injuries desensitized him? If Sokka asked where each scar came from, would he answer? 

When Zuko crouched and started to tug off his shoes, Sokka flushed and ran a hand down his face. _Spirits_ , he had to compose himself. He was just so lightheaded from the fumes of the lake.

Yeah, that was it.

And _of course_ Zuko was changing in front of him. It’s not like they had a choice. The proximity was unavoidable. He couldn’t just wait outside—

“You know you have to wear that,” Zuko said, pulling a sock up to his kneecap, “it’s flame retardant. And trust me, you don’t want to get burned.” He picked Sokka’s shorts off the ground and held them out.

Zuko was on his knees, inches away, looking up at him expectantly. Sokka fought another wave of dizziness as he snatched the shorts from his grasp, mumbling a thank you.

Then Zuko dropped his pants, and Sokka busied himself with stripping off his own clothes and rolling them messily into his pack. By the time he finished changing, Zuko had gathered all the pieces of armor they would need.

“These are the shin guards, the shoulder guards,” Zuko listed, passing them off to Sokka, “and this piece fits over your head, but you have to—”

Zuko’s eyes fell to his neck.

“What?” Sokka rasped, unconsciously licking his lips.

“The necklace,” he said, pointing at the strand of whale ivory. “It’s not protocol. You’ll have to take it off.”

Sokka sighed and untied it. It was a gift from his dad, and he hated to part with it, even temporarily. He only took it off to bathe or swim. 

Zuko must have noticed the hesitation because he climbed the shelves and unscrewed the vent in the ceiling, “for safekeeping”, he assured. When Sokka placed the necklace in his pack, Zuko hid it in the vent and closed it back up.

The shoes and shin plates went on easily enough, as did the forearm guards and belt. But the shoulder guards and chest piece had strings that hung down nonsensically, and no matter where he set the guards on his arm, the cords didn’t come anywhere close to other cords on the chest pieces, and Sokka was too frustrated to solve the puzzle of the Fire Nation guard uniforms. Zuko tapped his foot impatiently. That didn’t help either.

“We can’t stay in here forever, you know!” he hissed.

“You think I don’t know that?” Sokka growled, still fumbling with the strings. 

“Oh, would you just—“ Zuko grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, lifted his arms.

Sokka held his breath as he looped the strings around each other until each shoulder guard stabilized. He pulled the chest piece a little tighter, and Sokka suppressed a shiver when Zuko pressed a hand against his shoulder blade.

“Is that comfortable?” he asked, voice maddeningly steady. “If it’s too small, you can size up.”

“It’s fine.” Sokka cursed himself for how breathless he sounded. “I could’ve figured this out myself, you know.”

He huffed. “I doubt it. If you’re ready, we can go.”

Sokka was already leaving. The closet was closing in on him as he thrust the helmet over his head and slithered into the hallway without checking if it was empty. It was, by pure luck.

“I hope these disguises work,” Zuko said under his breath, shoulder warm against his.

Morning light poured against the hall opposite them. A prison yard was probably just around the corner. 

“We just need to lay low,” Sokka whispered, “find my dad as soon possible.”

_And Mai._

Sokka tensed as a stampede of footsteps erupted just ahead. A crowd of guards sprinted in the direction of the light, one stopping to stare at them.

“Guards!” the husky voice bellowed. Sokka and Zuko jumped off the wall, but the man didn’t seem to be suspicious as he motioned them forward. “There’s a scuffle in the yard, come on!”

They ran to join the crowd, met with a humid combination of morning fog and steam from the surrounding lake. 

They had done it. They had infiltrated The Boiling Rock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing like a small space to increase the sexual tension :)
> 
> also... I may have written this entire chapter excited to get to work on the next one. drama and angst ahead!
> 
> P.S.- I'd love for you to come visit me on [tumblr!](https://paintedlight.tumblr.com/)


	5. No Regrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay with this one!! I had to travel for some BUT this chapter's a bit longer than usual! But I hope you'll think it's worth it <3
> 
> a teaser: this chapter will have the opposite of the There Was Only One Bed trope. Instead, they find themselves in one room with a ton of beds lol

Zuko stayed by his side as they pushed through the sweaty prisoners packed into the yard. It was strangely quiet, a palpable tension weaving through the crowd as they semi-circled around two men, a prisoner and a guard.

But the first thing Sokka noticed was the dragon statue in-between them— poised to strike, mouth gaping and full of golden fangs. 

“I didn’t do anything,” the prisoner insisted. “I’m going back to my cell.”

The guard stepped closer, and the prisoner glanced down nervously at the red line near his feet. 

“You’re refusing to fight, Chit Sang?” the guard spit, a flame lighting from his hand.

Zuko gasped. Sokka wished he could read the expression on his face through the helmet, but he didn’t need to. Zuko stood as rigid as the statue itself, as if the sight of it had petrified him. 

Behind the men was a long rectangular section of yard, painted black and red and guarded by the dragon, about a sword’s length tall. It was stark against the gray stone of the rest of the prison. And it was empty; no one in the crowd ventured closer than a few paces from the red line that marked its periphery. 

“I was never challenged to an Agni Kai,” Chit Sang said, contempt coloring his words, “sir.”

Sokka grabbed Zuko’s arm just in time. 

“We can’t blow our cover,” he whispered, Zuko’s weight pulling against his grip.

There was a hiss as the guard lit his other hand.

“You might as well have already challenged me, standing so close to the arena. You know you’re not allowed within a pace.”

“What?” The prisoner— Chit Sang— backed a step away from the dragon. “That’s not a prison rule!”

The muscles shifted in Zuko’s arm as he clenched his fist. Sokka tightened the hold on his bicep.

“Is this… a fight to the death?”

Zuko shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Sokka was surprised he moved at all. His breathing sounded heavy, each inhale and exhale carefully measured.

A wave of heat rolled against the crowd when the guard’s hands ignited, flames reaching into the sky until the fog extinguished them.

“You think _I_ ,” he snarled, “would challenge _you_?” He dropped his arms suddenly, and a hush fell over the yard. “Do it.”

Chit Sang planted his heels in a defensive stance. “Make me!”

The guard erupted, sending an inferno straight for the prisoner’s chest. Chit Sang redirected the fire into the fog above with a grunt. But before the steam could suffocate the flames, guards from each direction tackled him into the stone.

“Firebending is prohibited,” the guard said as the others immobilized Chit Sang, hands tied behind his back. “You’re going in the cooler. And you—”

Sokka froze. The guard was pointing straight at him. 

“—help me take him in.” 

As the guard retrieved Chit Sang, Sokka leaned into Zuko, realizing then that he’d never let go of Zuko’s arm. Hesitantly, Sokka forced his grip to release. 

“Meet me back here in an hour!” he whispered, and trotted towards Chit Sang and the guard.

Flanked on either side, they escorted Chit Sang inside the prison. Sokka’s hand prickled with heat the whole way there.

* * *

“The warden will deal with you soon,” the guard said as Sokka closed the door behind Chit Sang, goosebumps breaking out over his skin when the gust of frigid air whipped by them. 

The guard huffed and leaned back against the wall. “Can you believe this guy?”

Sokka copied the movement. “Prisoners!” he laughed. “Am I right?” 

“Ugh, tell me about it!” 

_Spirits_ , this guy was a jerk. 

He knew he should be doing recon, taking advantage of being stuck standing in the middle of the prison, but his nerves were still buzzing. He could barely focus.

So, Sokka made a list.

One, he was four floors up. Two, this floor was full of coolers. Three, there were probably cells below, since the cells had to be somewhere, and, four, everything was unnervingly open. The hallways overlooked some sort of commons. Cool. Nowhere to hide. He was half-aware of his foot, tapping involuntarily on the metal floors. 

“You new here, kid?”

Sokka flinched, forced his foot to still. The guard quirked an eyebrow. 

“I’m, um. Yes!”

“I thought so,” the guard said, rolling his eyes. “Newbies are always so twitchy. Go ahead.” He knocked his fist into the cooler door behind them and winked. “Don’t be shy.”

Sokka released the breath he’d been holding and peered through the round glass window, blurry with ice and fog. Chit Sang’s large form sat huddled, shivering, in the center of the cooler. His lips were already tinted blue.

“It sure looks cold in there,” he muttered. He’d gotten lost in a snowstorm once, survived it with the help of a parka and a cave to shelter him from the wind; he didn’t want to imagine sitting in glacial temperatures with only a set of prison rags. 

“And _that’s_ why we call it ‘the cooler.’” The guard, jerk that he was, chuckled. “He won’t be firebending in there.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Sokka saw the guard scramble to attention. He swung back around and straightened just as the warden, tall and commanding, breached the stairs. He was followed by another guard, and—

_Mai._

She was dressed in gold robes, out of character if not for the black turtleneck surpassing the neckline. Her maroon lipstick outlined an almost imperceptible scowl. But he could perceive it, because it was directed at him.

The warden marched, hands clasped calmly behind his back, up to the cooler door. Just as he motioned for the guard to pull it open, Mai gently cleared her throat.

“Uncle,” she asked, her voice more melodic than Sokka had ever heard it, “I’d like to take a quick stroll. Do you mind if I have a guard accompany me?”

“Of course, dear.”

Mai nodded and turned, setting a graceful but brisk pace back in the direction of the yard. Sokka jogged to catch up. Rather than heading down the stairs, she stepped through a door to a balcony. It towered over the yard and lead, a little further down, to the gondola. 

She dropped the act the moment the door clicked shut.

“What in Agni’s name are you doing here?” she fumed. “I told you to wait at least five days before leaving!”

“I mean, if you round up—”

“Sokka, I saw you _two_ days ago.” She crossed her arms and cornered him into the railing. “If something happens to Zuko because you refused to follow simple instructions—” 

“Listen, your _boyfriend_ was making friends, so I had to pull him away early.” 

Her eyes widened for a moment, then transitioned into a deeper scowl, a deep line forming between her eyebrows.

“Zuko will be fine, Mai. That’s _my_ part of the deal.” Sokka glared, poking a finger into her crossed arms. “Where’s yours?”

“Your father,” she enunciated as if she was talking to child, “hasn’t been transferred yet. Like I told you, I just got here. There are—”

Mai paused to loop an arm through his, almost throwing him off balance, and floated them across the balcony. When she spoke again, it was in the same sing-songy tone as before. 

“There are protocols,” she sang, “I have obligations. Look,” Mai grabbed his shoulders and reached into her elaborate updo. She slid something small from the black tresses into his hand. “Cash this in when everything’s ready.”

He had barely hidden the pin, a golden clip studded with rubies, before the warden’s bodyguard appeared from the door and called for Mai to return. 

She bowed to him before joining the guard. An act. He watched her hands for knives as she sauntered away.

* * *

Zuko wasn’t in the yard.

No one was. Trying to keep up appearances, Sokka tugged at the metal guard on his forearm as he took another lap around the periphery. The sun was already headed west and its rays reflected off the stone floors, heating up the yard like an oven. More time had passed then he thought. Zuko must have been unable to find him, and left to go map out the rest of the prison.

Or, that’s what he hoped, at least. He wouldn’t let himself consider the alternative. 

The Agni Kai arena was still deserted. Even the guards avoided it in their rounds, which Sokka was thankful for. The golden dragon was resolute as ever, still and terrifying. He marched a few paces from it, until he was underneath the gondola, then kept marching until he reached the prison walls.

Leaning over the side, Sokka tried to pretend that the boiling waters below were the polar seas that surrounded his tribe, comforting in their cycles of calm and chaos. He tried to imagine a horizon instead of the rocky crater, his dad’s ship growing larger and larger as it approached, lit by sunrise. Dodging ice on choppy seas until it finally settled, and he could come ashore. 

But he couldn’t do it. The water just kept boiling.

Sokka sighed and resumed his patrol. Halfway through another lap, he heard thedistinct sound of someone clearing their throat.

“Hey there, fellow guard,” the voice said, stilted and directly behind him. “How goes it?”

Sokka whipped around and lifted the helmet’s visor. “Zuko!” 

His good eye widened through the slits in the helmet as he shushed him. “Shhh! Listen, I asked around the lounge. There aren’t any Water Tribe prisoners.” When he moved the visor aside, regret marred his features. “I’m afraid your father’s not here.”

“What?” It didn’t matter that he already knew; his heart sped up anyway. “Are you sure? Did you double-check?”

“Yeah, I did. I’m so sorry, Sokka,” he said, quiet, before leaning over the wall just as he had done minutes ago. “Should we go?”

The humidity had curled a few pieces of Zuko’s bangs, he noticed. It shortened the strands, lying around his eyes like a frame. Sokka heard his heartbeat in his ears.

“I just don’t know a way out of here,” Zuko continued, “and I don’t know how long we can last under cover.”

“We have to stay. I have a, uh, gut feeling.”

He turned to face him, mirth in his eyes. “I thought you were the plan guy?”

“A plan guy with intuition in  _droves_ ,” Sokka smirked. 

Zuko snorted, hardly a laugh, but enough of one that it twisted something in his chest. 

He was so dorky that Sokka could hardly believe, in the moment, that he was a _prince_. Even at his most dignified, he looked a little out of place. It was even harder to believe that Zuko had been the one to invade his village, to chase them around the world, to try and capture one his best friends. And not even that long ago.

“Here,” Zuko mumbled, reaching into the front of his chest piece. He pulled out a few strands of dried jerky. “I figured you’d missed lunch.”

Honestly, he had completely forgotten about lunch. Which he hadn’t thought was possible. He ate in silence as they stared contemplatively over the water. 

The meat was smoky, spicier than they ever made it back home. As he chewed, Sokka let himself indulge in the wild hope that maybe, after all this, he and Zuko could be friends. That the group would accept him again. That they could visit his family and Zuko could meet everyone, tend to old wounds, pay his respects and his dues.

But Zuko had a lot to make up for, even more to repair. And if he ever did become Fire Lord, it would be a lifelong effort.

“So,” Zuko said as Sokka licked the salty residue from his fingers, “what should we do?”

Sokka shut the visor and took a deep breath, let reality overtake his mind again.

He was at a prison, on a rescue mission, exchanging his friend for his father.

“I say we play guard until the night shift, then get some rest. We can look for my dad again tomorrow.”

* * *

“ _More_ new recruits?” The short man removed his helmet and scratched at his goatee, the room behind him bustling with guards in various states of undress. “Agni, if they don’t keep shipping you all down here, there won’t be anywhere left to put ya!”

“Are there no more beds?” Sokka tried not to sound desperate. If he had to sleep on this cold metal flooring without his favorite pelt, he would go feral.

“Aha! I almost forgot,” the goatee man said, moving past them and down the hallway. “Follow me, boys.”

They followed him down a flight of stairs, to the last door in a row of doors Sokka knew were prison cells from his recon earlier. But when he swung the door open, it wasn’t a cell— it was a single-windowed room, full of cots, covered in so much dust that he had to hold back a sneeze.

“The overflow barracks,” the guard explained. “They haven’t been used in a while.”

“Thank you, sir,” they said in unison.

“Of course. Make yourselves at home! If you boys aren’t friends now, you will be soon.” He elbowed them both in the ribs as he walked away, snickering.

Sokka shrugged and looked over at Zuko, but he didn’t meet his eyes, just stepped into the room and lit some of the lanterns lining the walls with a flick of his wrist. Soft light flickered over the rows of cots. Sokka slowly entered and shut the door, the click echoing through the high ceilings. Neither of them moved.

“Well, alright,” Sokka said to break the silence. “I’m taking this one!” On impulse, he chose a cot in the center row, one away from the wall, draped in the square of moonlight from the window. An ache bloomed in his chest. Yue must have chosen it for him.

He tossed his sword under the bed before jumping in, the cushion soothing the aches and pains he had ignored all day. Sighing, he closed his eyes. He would have been asleep already if not for the nagging voice in his head (which sounded suspiciously like Katara) telling him not to sleep in his armor. 

The bed to his left creaked. Sokka cracked an eye open to find Zuko, crosslegged, offering more jerky and some sort of sweet bun. He smiled as he took the food, about to thank him for dinner, but when Zuko smiled back, he didn’t trust himself to speak.

They ate in silence. It wasn’t as awkward as he expected it to be. If he was honest, it was actually pretty comfortable.

He finished off the jerky first— unnaturally spicy, yet again. It must be a Fire Nation favorite. Sokka didn’t understand the appeal.

The bun, though, was genius. It was buttery and full of some sort of berry jam, the tangy sweetness lingering after he took his last bite. It persisted as he bent down to take off his boots and calf guards, and when he stood to remove the rest of his armor. But before he could, Zuko rolled his eyes and motioned for him to turn around. 

As he untied the pieces, Sokka was hyperaware of Zuko’s little puffs of breath on the back of his neck, of his knuckles accidentally brushing against his skin as he worked. He could feel the shoulder guards loosening, heavy against his bicep, when Zuko stopped. Sokka held his breath. 

Then Zuko huffed, almost a laugh.

“What?” Sokka asked, a little too defensively. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing,” Zuko waved off, wistfulness evident in his tone. “I guess I just grew up around all of this, but you— I don’t know. It’s just,” he stammered as he returned to pulling on the strings. “Dressed up, you look like a warrior.”

The shoulder guards released and fell. Sokka caught them before they hit the ground. 

“I—” he started, but didn’t know what to say. There was a piece of himself that protested being praised while in Fire Nation garb. But the rest of him flooded with warmth at the compliment. He swallowed. “Thank you.”

Zuko stayed silent. After a few more tugs, he backed away, the chest piece loosened enough to pull over his head. Sokka unclasped the forearm guards and tossed them by the bed with the rest of the armor.

By the time he turned back around, stripped down to his undershorts (it was hot there, okay?), Zuko was already out of his armor. What a show-off.

He flung himself onto the cot and stared up at the ceiling. It had been a long day. Reaching into the pocket of his undershorts, he felt around for Mai’s hair clip. It was smooth, even when his thumb rubbed over the rubies.

“So,” Sokka said, glancing over right as Zuko slid under the thin sheet. “Mai, huh?”

Zuko shifted a little, lying on his back. “What about her?”

“I thought royals just had arranged relationships.”

“Technically, it _was_ arranged.” 

He thought that was all he would reveal, and had started to let himself drift off when Zuko continued, muttering into the air. 

“We grew up together, and always knew we would be married. But we are—” he cleared his throat. “We _were_ close.” 

Sokka hummed. “I can’t even imagine that. There weren’t even any girls my age in my village, except Katara.” He paused, considered asking what he wanted to ask. It came easier in the dark. “There weren’t any boys either. They had all gone off to war.”

“The only girls I was ever around were Azula and her friends.” Zuko said, not catching the hint. “There was Lu Ten, my cousin, but he was a bit older than me. He died in the war when I was young.”

Sokka ran his hands down his face and groaned. “I had almost forgotten you were related to Azula. She’s a scary chick, probably the scariest teenager I know.” He had to laugh. “And that’s saying something.”

“Yeah. She’s terrifying.”

Zuko laid still, staring at the ceiling. His cot was placed against the wall, directly under the window so that the moonlight passed over him, hiding him completely in shadow.

“Everything… always came easy to her,” he said, his voice a strange monotone.

“Competitive, huh?”

He didn’t respond. Sokka raced to lighten the mood, but tension hung in the air, as dense as the steam outside. “She does seem determined—”

“No, you don't get it!” 

Sokka jumped, pulled his sheet back. Zuko fixated on the wall across from him, shivering. 

“She’s a fire bending prodigy, and everyone adores her! My father—”Zuko whipped his own sheet off of his legs, scrambled for the edge of the bed. “My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born!”

“Hey, buddy—” Sokka soothed, swinging his legs to floor. He wasn’t sure if he should reach out. Zuko wouldn’t look at him, just kept glaring at the foot of the bed.

“When I was still a child,” Zuko said thickly, “my own grandfather wanted me dead. And my father was going to do it, until my mother stopped him!” He sat on the side of the bed and dropped his head into his hands, shaking so hard that his body jerked.

_Spirits_.

“Hey, listen to me,” Sokka said, as softly as he could, as if talking to a wild animal. When he didn’t react, Sokka knelt at ground between Zuko’s knees, reached out to rub up and down his arms. “Listen to me, Zuko—”

He tore his hands from his face and balled them into fists. “It’s as if I killed her myself!” he shouted, tears tracking down his cheeks. “I wish I’d never been born!”

“Zuko!” Sokka cupped Zuko’s face, careful to avoid the scar, and forced him to look at him. “No one is ever guilty of being born! If your mother thought you could have understood, that is what she would have said. That she was _lucky_ to have you before dying,” he exclaimed, his heart lodged in his throat. “That she had no regrets.”

Zuko’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. He was wide-eyed, unblinking. Like he was finally seeing him. 

Two more tears spilled from the corner of his eyes. Their faces were inches apart, Zuko’s breath warm against his skin. But Sokka kept holding his face, and would keep holding him until he understood. 

He flinched when Zuko blinked and pulled away, breaking the trance. He scrambled back into his cot and turned to face the wall.

"We should get some rest,” Zuko whispered. The small flames in the lanterns died out at once. 

Sokka sighed, knees aching as he pushed himself up off the hard ground and into bed. His fatigue fought with the day’s steady flow of adrenaline, but he was grateful when he looked out the window to find it a perfect view of the moon, days away from being full.

_Is it wrong? To lie to him?_ Sokka asked Yue. _It feels terrible. I just… don’t think I have a choice._

Did he have a choice? 

He lifted up his hand into the light, stared at the white glow across his palm, the shadows across his knuckles, how they shifted as he turned at the wrist. It was strange, now, looking at his hand without his wraps. Not that he always had them on— it just seemed like he should have his hand, and all its contours, memorized by now. It was something he should _know_. 

Zuko hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d wrenched himself from his grasp. Sokka wished it wasn’t so humid so he could crawl into bed with him, claim it was some Southern Water Tribe thing, conserving heat, so that he could—

He wished he could—

_Huh._

There was something Sokka _did_ know. He couldn’t stop thinking about Zuko. It was impossible.

It was funny, really. The more he _tried_ to give up thinking about him, the more he told himself that Zuko meant nothing to him, the harder he tried to pluck the idea of him out of his heart, the more he stayed there.

Sokka knew that he couldn’t crawl into bed with him, without wanting to touch him. 

He couldn’t feel his breath against his mouth again, without wanting to kiss him.

And he couldn’t kiss him, without wanting to save him.

* * *

A snowy wind blew over the ocean, the sky a deep navy blue. He sat, unmoving, beside his father. Katara was propped up in his lap, sniffling. 

It had been one year.

Sokka still hadn’t grown into his new parka, and the white pelt blocked half his vision and stuck to his lips. His lips were numb as he attempted to spit out the fur. Normally, he would stop trying, but he needed a distraction. 

In the dark, he couldn’t tell if it was snow or ash that fell from the sky.

Katara’s sob pierced the silence. Sokka watched out of the corner of his eye. Dad pulled her to his chest and rubbed her back with a gloved hand.

“Oh, sweetheart. What is it?”

“If I wasn’t a waterbender, she would still be here,” she cried. “I wish I had never been born!”

“Katara, look at me,” Dad said, firm but full of warmth. Sokka swallowed down the knot in his throat and kept his eyes trained on the invisible horizon.

But he still saw it, the way he held her small face in his hands.

“When your mother died, she did not weep. Do you know why?”

“No,” she hiccuped.

“Because she knew that she was lucky to have you before dying,” he whispered, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. “That she had no regrets.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come cry with me on [tumblr](https://paintedlight.tumblr.com/)!


	6. Second Chances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not me, posting in the middle of the night again lol
> 
> it's crazy over here in the States... everyone please take care of yourselves <3

Sokka was shaken awake by a warm hand. Peeling his eyes open, he groaned to find the room still veiled in darkness, dawn only providing the smallest measure of light. 

Then the hand withdrew, a chill left behind. 

He rubbed at his eyes. Blinking into the shadows, he could barely make out the blurry figure that was Zuko, pulling a tunic over his chest. The sight hit Sokka like a tidal wave.

Last night was…

He scrambled out of the sheets and into his shorts. Now that he was conscious enough to notice, the silence of the morning was hardly peaceful— but he pulled on his socks and kept his mouth shut. If he spoke, his words would get away from him, race into the thick of his feelings, and trap him like one of his nets. Try and change his plans.

That couldn’t happen. 

Could it?

Zuko was ready to go, standing pointlessly and obviously trying to avoid eye contact. Sokka’s heart sank— surely something had changed since last night. Now, what that _something_ was exactly, he couldn’t quite pinpoint. But the longer they dodged each others’ gaze, the more untethered he became, like a ship unable to land.

Sighing, he secured his calf guards. When he reached for his boots, he almost bumped into Zuko’s arm. They both froze with a hand over the pile. 

Sokka’s lungs burned.

Zuko was the first to move, wordlessly collecting the rest of Sokka’s armor. 

He didn’t notice himself slide on his boots, stand up. He didn’t know when he let Zuko guide the chest piece over his head, place the shoulder guards, and tie it all together with apparent ease and precision. But as Zuko made the final adjustments, Sokka closed his eyes and leaned into the warm palm pressed against his back.

Then Zuko cleared his throat, and the hand pulled away. 

“Same plan for today?” he asked, clenching and unclenching his fists. It was as fidgety as Sokka had ever seen him. “Keep a lookout for your father? We should start looking for a way out of this place, too.”

“Uh, yeah!” Sokka rubbed the back of his neck, flinching when he realized he hadn’t put his hair in a wolf tail yet. Carding through his tangles, he picked the hair tie up from the floor.

“I’m thinking we take rotations near the yard,” he continued, securing the tie, “since it looks like the gondola is probably the only way in and out of this place. It may answer both our questions.” 

The room, stone draped in warm reds and golds, glowed pink as the sun rose. Zuko’s cheeks did the same as he nodded.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Zuko took the patrol of the yard first so that Sokka could try the food hall for himself. They had a hot bar, _four_ non-jerky meat options. He drooled as he filled a plate, complete with one of the buns Zuko had brought him last night. 

Unsurprisingly, the meat was too spicy, but it got the job done.

The rest of his shift wasn’t even half as interesting. Level after level, up and down, he kept marching through the hallways, circling the commons below. His boots echoed against the metal floors and the loops around the prison were almost dizzying, disorienting after a while. Like the most boring cactus juice trip ever.

When he arrived at the ground floor for the thousandth time that morning, a new group of convicts sprawled across the commons just as Zuko entered from the yard for their shift swap. Sokka leaned against the stair rails, pretending to watch the prisoners.

A group of burly men at one table. 

Expected. 

A mix of all kinds of ruffians at another. 

Yup. 

A young woman, hunched over with elbows resting on her knees, alone, beautiful, actually. Hair cut off just above the shoulders—

A muscular frame. Brown hair in a half-pony. Sokka’s heart stopped. It was her.

It was _Suki_.

A knot in his chest released, like he had been stuck underwater for years and finally breached the surface. Azula had lied— Suki wasn’t lost forever. She was here, alive. He barely held back laughter as tears blurred his vision.

This was his second chance. 

Unaware of the ray of sun that had pierced through the prison walls and shone directly onto Suki’s brooding form, Zuko planted himself to his right. Sokka yanked him behind the stairs. 

He ripped his sleeve from Sokka’s grasp. “What are you—”

“Suki’s here!”

“Who’s Suki?”

Sokka hesitated. It didn’t feel right to call her his girlfriend. It felt… presumptuous. Plus, he hadn’t mentioned her on the war balloon. 

He settled for the cold hard facts. 

“She’s a Kyoshi Warrior!” he exclaimed. “She befriended us right after we started traveling with Aang, and she helped us through the Serpent’s Pass.”

Zuko hummed, eyes wide through the slits in the helmet. Pride surged in Sokka’s chest. “Wow. She must be talented, then.”

“She is! And she’s kind of a, uh,” Sokka peered around to the commons area, making sure she was still there. She was. He couldn’t withhold a grin, his cheeks almost hurting with it. “She’s a close friend.”

He waited for Zuko to respond, but he didn’t— instead, he just nodded, as formal as ever. 

_Spirits._ If they were friends after all this, he’d have to teach him to relax a little. Tui knew he needed it.

“So I was thinking,” Sokka continued, rubbing his palms together, “I need to go check on her in her cell tonight. That way, I can let her in on what we’re planning.”

Zuko huffed. “And what _are_ we planning, Sokka?” 

Sokka froze at his tone, laced with venom. And for what? Because he was mad he hadn’t figured out how to break out of _the highest security prison in the_ _Fire Nation_ in _one day_?

“I’m working on it,” he said, attempting to keep his voice steady. This really wasn’t the place for an argument. And he needed him. “But I was wondering if you’d watch the door? When I go see Suki?”

Zuko’s jaw clenched hard as he glared. Sokka glared back. He was going to talk to Suki, and Zuko wasn’t going to throw a fit and take that from him. Absolutely not.

Just as Sokka’s eyes started to water, Zuko blinked and tore his gaze to the ground.

Success.

“Yeah, fine. Whatever,” he grumbled, crossing his arms. “But not long. I don’t want to look suspicious.”

Sokka raised his hands placatingly. “I promise I will get out of there in a timely manner.” 

Zuko abruptly rushed past him. 

Okay. No comment, then.

As he followed, resuming his shift guarding the staircase, his stomach growled. He was close to the food hall but was too worried he would lose sight of Suki if he indulged in a lunch break. Zuko, of course, was already halfway across the commons. He looked tense from head to toe, shoulders up to his ears, but Sokka figured it couldn’t hurt to ask—

“Could you go grab me some snacks?” he called. A few of the burly men grimaced in his direction.

Zuko paused, then stormed back to the yard entrance, the slam of the door echoing through the prison.

* * *

Sokka slid into Suki’s cell, cloudy from the steam venting in from the lake, as calmly as he could. Her reflexes were as fast as a rat viper, and he wasn’t really in the mood for getting beat up.

She leaped to her feet when the heavy door clicked shut. 

“What is it?” she demanded. Sokka’s heart raced at the sound. He still couldn’t believe she was here, her eyes bright and fearless. “Did I do something wrong?”

He brought his hands to his hips. “You mean you don’t recognize me?” He almost broke the act and smiled. Boy, had he missed her.

But Suki’s lip furled, so it must not have worked.

“You people all look the same to me,” she spit, eyes narrowing. The energy in the room shifted, and Sokka knew he had to come clean. Fast.

“Well,” Sokka tore off his helmet, beaming, “it sure is nice to see you.”

Her mouth went slack before splitting into a teary grin. “Sokka!” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck with such force that he had to gracelessly pull them to the cold floor. He held her tight, buried his face in her neck. Even through the sweat and grime, she still smelled distinctly like _Suki._ Another wave of tears pooled in his vision.

Petting the back of her hair, Sokka forced himself to focus. “The other Kyoshi Warriors,” he asked softly, “are they here?”

“No,” she sniffed and wiped her tears with her sleeve. “I don’t know where they are. They locked me in here because I’m the leader.” Suki cleared her throat, but her voice still shook. “I have no idea where they were taken, and I didn’t know—”

Sokka rubbed her back as she held back a sob. “Oh, Suki. I’m so sorry.”

“But I’ve been thinking and I have an idea,” she said and grabbed his shoulders, wet eyes wide and determined. “The coolers they use as punishment for firebending— they’re used to keep firebenders contained. That means they’re completely insulated and sealed from the heat outside.” Suki stood up, held a fist under her chin, and paced back and forth across the tiny room. “If there’s a way to dislodge the cooler, we could use it as a boat somehow, I just don’t know anyone who could get in there to see how it all connects.”

“Suki,” he started, then paused. That was actually an incredible plan. “First of all, you’re a genius. But I already have—”

“There’s one more thing, Sokka.” She stopped in front of him, wringing her hands, her forehead furrowed beneath her humidity-curled bangs. Like she was _nervous_. 

Sokka swallowed. “What is it?”

Suki took a deep breath and grabbed his hand. Sokka latched on.

“One of the other Warriors, Hideko, we’ve, um—”

Sokka squeezed her hand. She blushed and looked away.

“We’ve known each other for a long time. I hadn’t seen it coming, but I think it has always been there,” she continued, eyes glistening. “Feelings, I mean.”

_Oh._ His fingers went numb, slackened in her grip. She held on tighter.

"Hideko and I— we started dating right before we were captured, and I haven’t seen her since,” she said, her voice thick as she laid her other hand on his cheek, warm and grounding. “Sokka, you’re a wonderful man, and I do love you. I hope we can be friends?”

His heart turned over in his chest. It hurt, but it wasn’t as painful as he expected, somehow. Not when Suki was glowing like snowcapped mountains at sunrise. 

He squeezed her hand again. When she smiled hopefully, he did too. He couldn’t help it.

“Of course we can be friends, Suki. I’m just glad you’re alive,” Sokka insisted, surprised at how easy it felt. He pulled her hand from his cheek to hold it in both of his own, rubbed circles into her palms with his thumbs. “And I’m sure you’ll see Hideko again. I’m busting you out!”

She blinked, head tilting. “How?”

“Do you remember Prince Zuko?”

Suki scowled. “That angry firebender who burned down my village?” She withdrew from his grasp and crossed her arms. “I remember him.”

Oh, yeah. 

“That’s him!” Sokka laughed stiffly. “He’s kind of… here. With me.”

“…With you.”

He scratched at the back of his neck. “Yeah, it’s a long story. He’s actually guarding the door right now!”

“Huh,” she intoned, eyebrows raised. She squinted at the small window at the top of the door, the blur of Zuko’s head visible through the slot. “You’re sure we can trust him?”

“Yes! We—”

Sokka nearly jumped out of his skin when Zuko rapped two loud knocks into the cell door. 

“Like I said,” Sokka echoed, reaching for the doorknob, “it’s a long story. But I’ll be back here as soon as I can to explain everything!”

“Okay. Sokka?”

“Yeah?”

Suki stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. His skin warmed beneath the touch. “Be careful.”

Sokka smiled softly and gave her a final nod before slipping back through the door. Zuko stood by rigidly. The moment the door shut, he glowered in Sokka’s direction.

“Took you long enough!”

“Calm down, Zuko,” he whispered, leaning around his limber form to investigate. He had expected a suspicious guard, maybe even the warden, to be questioning Zuko when he exited the cell or _at least_ expected someone to be in the hallway. But there was nothing, no one. It was empty. 

Sokka threw his arms up. “No one’s even around!”

“Oh, so I was supposed to wait until the warden showed up to ask what I was doing?” Zuko’s right eye narrowed, shrunk to the size of his left. “To take the fall for you while you made out with your girlfriend?”

“We weren’t—” Sokka sputtered. “She’s not—”

“Save your breath,” he barked, then turned and marched to the stairs. 

_Tui and La_ help him. What was his problem?

“You go back to the yard, I’m going to the food hall,” he said as he disappeared from view, step by step. “Don’t wait up.”

* * *

The best thing about the evening shift at the yard was the crisp smell of night on the ocean that somehow cut through the volcanic steam.

The worst thing was that, this close to the lake, the sky was mostly clouded from view. Even the moon hid behind a veil.

Sokka shivered as he gripped the stone wall overlooking the water.  Whatever glimmer of choice he thought he’d had last night— to save Zuko, to keep him away from the Fire Nation and return him to Aang, what Zuko _thought_ was their plan— didn’t exist anymore. 

Not with _two_ lives on the line, now. He couldn’t risk it.

He couldn’t.

He just couldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Suki!! so much!!!
> 
> And yeah, Hideko is a reference to The Handmaiden, where the two love interests are named Sookhee and Izumi Hideko. I almost named her Izumi but figured that may have been a little too weird and confusing hahah
> 
> come visit me on [tumblr!](https://paintedlight.tumblr.com/)


	7. This Is How It Feels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while! I am currently in the final days of graduate application submissions, and have been writing this as a reward for getting other work done. it's like 1k longer than a normal chapter & it's finally here :)
> 
> WARNING: sexual content in this chapter! I split this chapter into 3 sections with those horizontal lines- it's the 2nd section that includes sexual content, so feel free to read the other parts if you would rather. I briefly summarize what happened in the end notes, so head there if you aren't comfortable.
> 
> enjoy!

Sokka cracked open the door and slid into the barracks, pitch black. None of the lanterns were lit so he approached his bed carefully, letting the grayish shapes of other cots guide him to the back of the room.

He undressed, as quietly as he could with Zuko asleep, hesitating at the pieces of armor Zuko normally helped him with. They couldn’t be _that_ hard to remove. He knew by now where the strings were, at least. 

Reaching an arm behind his back, he pulled his shoulder at a weird angle until he grabbed a string and yanked it down. There was some sort of release, but nothing budged. He growled, wiggling his fingers around until he found another cord, found the knot and loosened the—

“Hard to get off on your own, huh?” Zuko hissed into the silence. 

His shoulder guards clanged against the metal floor. Heart racing, Sokka took a deep breath and glided the chest piece over his head, knocking his wolf tail loose. 

Zuko, his back to the room, hadn’t moved a muscle. 

“Sorry to wake you,” Sokka said with patience born only of exhaustion. He couldn’t even find the energy to be sarcastic as he freed the rest of his hair and pocketed the tie. “I didn’t expect you to already be asleep.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Oh.”

Sokka sat at the edge of his bed tugged off his boots, peeled off his socks. Zuko sighed and shifted in the sheets. 

“I probably won’t be sleeping tonight anyway.”

“Why?” He paused. “Headache?”

“I feel a nightmare coming,” he rasped, his voice trailing off as the anger dissolved. Even in the silence, Sokka strained to hear him. “Being here hasn’t really helped.”

His throat tightened, guilt gnawing at him. “I’m sorry, buddy.” 

Sokka tore back the sheet and dipped inside, focusing on anything— the gritty texture of the thin fabric, the dusty smell of the room, the ache in his feet from walking all day—to keep himself from doing something stupid, like try and comfort Zuko. There was nothing he could do, anyway.

Nothing he could do except follow the plan. Mai’s plan. 

Zuko’s girlfriend, Mai. Her plan. 

Zuko’s girlfriend Mai’s plan.

Gritting his teeth, he thumbed the ridges of the hair clip, replaying the memory of Mai insisting he keep Zuko safe. If he kept going along with this, Zuko would be fine.

This _was_ the best-case scenario.

Zuko’s bed creaked as he turned on his back. Sokka outlined his profile in the shadows, his sharp nose and chin, shades of gray differentiating between his pale skin and dark hair. Suddenly, the silence was full to the brim.

“So,” Zuko said, his tone indecipherable. “Suki.”

… _Suki?_

“What about her?” he asked defensively.

“Is she…” Zuko hesitated as if searching for the right word, “…okay?”

Sokka ran a hand down his face, warmth filling his chest until it burned. The guy never ceased to surprise him. As much as liked Zuko, he kind of wished he’d go back to being an asshole— he was more predictable back then.

“Yeah, she is! Thank the spirits _,_ or karma, or whatever” he said, relief gripping him again. “I had no idea she would be here. She was captured before the eclipse.”

Zuko may have hummed in response, but Sokka couldn’t be sure. He could’ve imagined it. He waited for another question, a comment maybe, but nothing. The silence stretched on.

Oh well. Goodnight to him, too.

Sokka fluffed up the flat pillow and closed his eyes. He wasn’t even close to drifting when Zuko spoke again.

“So… you and Suki?”

Heat prickled up Sokka’s neck to his cheeks. 

“No! No, I mean—” he stumbled, thankful for the shield of darkness masking his blush. “Okay, yes, we had a thing, but it’s been a while.” He cleared his throat. “She’s talking to someone else now.”

“Oh,” Zuko said, resuming the cryptic tone, “sorry.”

Dim white light poured across the room, and Sokka squinted through the window above Zuko’s bed and into the sky. The clouds had finally cleared and the moon was bright, only one day away from fullness. Sokka had never been that mystical of a person, but, before Yue, he felt like full moons really meant something. Even beyond its bond with the ocean, beyond its wisdom passed down to waterbenders— something more like destiny. 

After Yue, destiny lost its appeal.

“Honestly,” Sokka heard himself say, as if his voice materialized out of the moonlight, “it’s okay. She’s alive, and I have a chance to save her. That’s… more than enough.”

_I’ll save her, Yue,_ he prayed, the clouds rushing to hide her again, _since I couldn’t save you. I’ll save—_

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Zuko’s eyes cut hot through the shadows, a deep amber. When he blinked, a few of the lanterns began to glow, throwing warm hues against the walls, against the sheets and against Zuko’s hair. A shiver ran down Sokka’s spine. 

“Sure.”

“I was supposed to marry Mai.”

Sokka huffed a laugh. He already knew that, he knew it from the beginning of all of this, but the reminder opened up a chasm in his chest to try and swallow up the familiar ache. He wondered if he should let it.

“Yeah, you told me that.”

“I know! I mean—” Zuko looked away, grumbling. “Right before I left to train the Avatar, she started asking about _it_ again.” 

He paused as if Sokka should say something, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to say. His hands tingled, but if he moved there was a high chance he would take Mai’s hair clip out of his pocket and chuck it across the room.

“The engagement,” Zuko clarified, as if Sokka didn’t know.

He gave in to his restlessness and fiddled his thumbs, staring at the ceiling. “And, uh,” he choked out, “what did you say?” 

Why did he care what Zuko said when he couldn’t have him? Why did _the plan_ always have to get in the way of— of— 

“I said I wasn’t sure.”

“What?” Sokka flinched as if he’d been slapped across the face. “Why?”

“I think—” Zuko stopped abruptly and restarted, whispering as if convinced someone was listening in, “I think I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Sokka asked, whispering back. “Of your family’s anger? For flipping sides?”

“Of Mai.”

Oh. Yeah. Mai had thought her feelings were unrequited— she hadn’t even thought they were _dating_. But to Zuko, they had been. He thought he’d let her down. 

And, now, just his luck, Sokka had to play mediator.

“She’ll take you back, Zuko,” he assured, the words stinging his throat on the way out. “She seems nice enough, I guess? You know. Besides the knives. Gloomy, but not… mean.” He forced nonchalance into his tone. “What’s to be scared of?”

“I don’t know, I just feel it,” Zuko said, softer than should be allowed. “Like the reflex of pulling your hand from a flame.” His voice shook, clawing at Sokka’s defenses. And he didn’t have any more defenses left to give. He couldn’t protect him, too.

Sokka squeezed his eyes shut and cursed under his breath. 

After all this, he was turning Zuko over to the very person he was afraid of? And why was he afraid of Mai? Had she done something to him? Should he ask? _Spirits_ , it wasn’t fair, not like anything ever turned out— 

“Tell me,” Zuko said and rolled over to face him, folding his arms under his unscarred cheek, “what is it that women want?”

_What is it that… what?_

“Excuse me?” he squeaked as every single thought left his brain.

“I mean, I’ve _tried_ , _”_ Zuko rambled, “I’ve given her gifts, like her favorite pastries!” He propped himself up on an elbow, his other hand gripping the pillow like a lifeline. “And, and shells at the beach, you know, girl stuff! But every time I go to touch her, I just, freeze up, and—”

“Honestly, man,” Sokka flushed, “I’ve only had a handful of—”

“— but you’ve had them!” Zuko growled and hid his face in his hands. “How am I supposed to know how to be a good partner? It’s not like I have any family I could ask about—” 

Sokka’s ears rang. Mai wasn’t some sort of villain, which was good. And Zuko clearly _wanted_ to be with her, which was also... good. Yeah. Definitely a good thing. 

But Zuko was afraid, and Sokka didn’t want that. Besides, he did have experience— he’d be an asshole if he just withheld all his secrets, let Zuko keep fumbling around his girlfriend, too nervous to make a move. It’d be a waste. It would be _rude._

_Tui and La_ , he might as well show him one thing then put him to bed. 

Zuko was still babbling when Sokka, possessed, disentangled himself from his cocoon and bridged the gap, his knees hitting the side of Zuko’s cot with a thump. Zuko’s mouth snapped shut at the sound, and his neck whipped around to meet Sokka’s eyes at such a harsh angle that he almost turned to his back again. Just staring. 

“ _Spirits_ , Zuko, just— make some room, buddy.”

Sokka held his breath. Zuko wasn’t moving, and, _shit_ , maybe he’d read into this all wrong, maybe he wasn’t talking about _romantic activities_ at all! Maybe it was more just, like, dating? In a general sense? Maybe he didn’t know how because he was a prince? He _had_ said he didn’t have friends his own age, maybe that’s— 

Zuko shuffled back against the wall and gently pulled the sheet back. 

Sokka didn’t felt his limbs move until he was snug under the sheet. Their knees bumped together from lack of space, heat radiating off of Zuko in waves. The lanterns flickered bright as Sokka laid his head against the pillow, situating himself exaggeratedly just to buy his brain a little more time to catch up.

This was really happening.

He met Zuko’s wide gaze, then followed the line of his throat as he swallowed. A little further down, Zuko’s bare chest, and Sokka’s breath caught when he saw it again— the pink scar, thin and long, stretching right underneath his collarbone. He reached out tentatively, and as his finger made contact with warm skin, Zuko gasped and flinched away.

“I’m sorry!” Sokka amended, shame heating his face. “I should’ve asked.”

“Yeah, but,” Zuko said, a little breathless. He licked his lips, and Sokka’s head spun at the motion. “It’s okay. You can— you can touch me.”

A wave of dizziness washed over him as he reached out again, this time laying a palm against Zuko’s chest, his thumb tracing the scar, just barely raised. Zuko shivered and Sokka’s looked at his face just in time to see his eyes close, jaw tense.

“How’d you get this one, Zuko?” he breathed, thumb still stroking against him.

“Um,” Zuko swallowed again. “Sword-fighting practice.”

“You can sword fight?” Sokka paused his ministrations, surprised that a firebender would bother to learn sword-fighting when _literal flames_ could shoot out of his hands. When Zuko didn’t respond, Sokka caressed the scar again. “Can you feel anything, here?”

“A little,” he whispered.

“How about,” Sokka started, pushing at his shoulder gently until Zuko was on his back. He surveyed his chest for the other two scars he had noticed before— and there they were, on his side, parallel to each other and a deeper pink than the one on his collarbone, a little more jagged. Sokka shifted and moved his right hand from Zuko’s shoulder to the pillow beside his head to prop himself up, his left hand hovering in silent permission to touch. In the low light, the black of Zuko’s pupils had almost consumed the gold. He nodded for Sokka to continue.

When Sokka brushed his fingertips across his side, Zuko shuddered, arching into the touch. Studying Zuko’s face, his mouth already slack, Sokka wrapped his hand over the scars, gripping his waist. Zuko moaned, barely audible, but he _moaned_ , and Sokka felt blood pound in his ears, so disorienting that he leaned his forehead into Zuko’s sternum to try and stabilize himself. Breathing against his chest, Sokka melted at the smell of jasmine on his skin and the sound of Zuko’s racing heart. _Spirits,_ they hadn’t even kissed and he already felt like he was on fire.

He pressed his fingers into the taut muscle of Zuko’s waist just to hear him gasp.

“Yeah,” he breathed, sounding just as wrecked as Sokka felt, “I can feel that.”

Sokka swallowed and raised his head. Zuko’s stare burned through him, almost painful to look at, but instead of backing away he pulled himself up to face him, his raven hair strewn across the pillow. He lifted a hand towards his jaw when Zuko caught his wrist. 

“I wasn’t going to—”

Zuko’s eyes softened as he guided Sokka’s hand to cup his cheek, resting his fingers over the leathery edges of the scar. His heart lodged in his throat, and after a moment he brushed his thumb across the thickened skin, as feather-light as he could muster. Zuko was, honestly, beautiful— his expression as vulnerable as they’d been when he’d saved him at the cliffside, but now bared open for something much better, yet perhaps just as terrifying. He searched Zuko’s eyes for a next step, because they were as far off the map as he’d imagined they could go.

“Don’t ask about it. Please.”

“Okay,” Sokka promised, leaning his forehead against Zuko’s. Choppy bursts of breath cascaded over his face, and that was it. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“I want to kiss you,” he whispered, hesitant, Zuko’s lips a hair’s breadth away.

Zuko’s hand wrapped around Sokka’s shoulder, squeezed lightly.

“Okay,” he said, and Sokka closed the space between them, the press of his lips, warm, chaste, his head spinning like a whirlwind. _Spirits_ , he was in trouble.

The ache in his chest burst, the sensation almost as intense as a heartbreak. And Zuko’s lips were soft, so gentle that Sokka hardly felt him kissing back, and— that wouldn’t do— he lowered himself down across Zuko’s chest, shuddering at the warmth of him, the firm expanse of him, their legs tangling under the sheet. Zuko’s hand fell from his bicep and wrapped around his back, pulling him closer against him and digging his fingertips into his back. Their lips glided over each other, slow, so slow that Sokka had no idea how much time had passed when Zuko pulled away and sucked in a shaky breath.

His eyelids were fluttering, heavy. “How do you know all this?” Zuko rasped, the timbre of his voice heating Sokka inside-out. “You must have a lot of experience.”

He chuckled, breathless. “Yeah, Suki taught me.”

“Oh,” Zuko hummed, his gaze locked on Sokka’s lips. Sokka moved his hand from Zuko’s cheek to run it through his hair, which, as every part of Zuko seemed to be, was softer than it appeared, and smiled down at him.

“Do you want me to, uh, teach you more?”

“Teach me everything,” Zuko said and took Sokka’s face in his hands, brought him down against his lips with fury. He whimpered at the heat of it, but he was too euphoric to be embarrassed, and pressed in harder. It’s clumsy but it’s _hot_ and then Zuko opened for him, the wet slide of his tongue breaking the dam in Sokka’s heart as if he wasn’t already overflowing. He clutched Zuko’s waist and retreated, noticed his face scrunch up in confusion before he replanted his mouth right beneath his jaw, feeling the rumble of Zuko’s groan against his lips.

“So this is, what, _uhh_ ,” Zuko groaned as Sokka licked down his neck, lapping at the soft patch of skin above his collarbone, “what it feels like.”

Sokka froze, the breath knocked out of him like he had slipped and crashed onto the ice. 

_Spirits_ , he was so selfish. This was supposed to be for Zuko, not for him. 

This was a one-time thing. This was all he had.

He hid his face in Zuko’s neck to collect himself, cursed at the tears threatening to spill over. After one more deep breath, he nipped at the spot where Zuko’s neck and shoulder met. The ache in his heart spread when Zuko gasped, pulling him tighter against him.

“This is how it feels,” Sokka whispered, wet lips trailing over the scar on his collarbone. “This is how you will feel for Mai.”

Zuko grabbed the back of Sokka’s neck, fingers tangling in his hair. “Really?” he said, insecurity bleeding through. In retaliation, Sokka kissed a trail over and down his sternum.

“Yes,” he swore, in between pecks. “How could Mai not adore you?”

“She won’t think she’s making love to a corpse?”

Sokka stopped in his tracks and looked up. Zuko’s eyes were wide, like the question was a normal question and he was just getting impatient that Sokka hadn’t answered him yet. He pushed himself up towards him again and bracketed his head with his forearms, threading fingers into his hair.

“Why would she say that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, hiding one side of his face in the pillow. “She said the only firebenders as cold as me are dead.”

Sokka just stared at Zuko’s furrowed brow, increasingly aware of how his hands had started shaking, and forced his clenched jaw to unlock.

“Well,” he said, gently guiding Zuko’s gaze back to his, thumb grazing his bottom lip, “you’re plenty warm for me.”

* * *

Zuko’s mouth dropped open like he was about to say something, and Sokka drove his lips into him to keep him quiet. He seemed stunned, but recovered quickly, quiet moans leaking in between the heavy, humid kisses. Sokka bit softlyinto Zuko’s bottom lip, he couldn’t stop himself, and it was a mistake because as he pulled back, his lip pulling free, Zuko was staring at him with such a glazed tenderness that his stomach dropped. 

Whatever was happening here, whatever it was, felt sacred. As he burrowed into Zuko’s neck again, tongue against his pulse point, Sokka swore on the spirits that he would pour all the love into this that he could. Because it was true, and he’d sworn to Zuko that he wouldn’t lie to him.

He made his way down his warm skin, rich with salt and jasmine, and this time, when Zuko arched into him, he was hard and pressing into his hip. Sokka suppressed a shiver, ignoring his own pleasure, and kept sucking at his chest, just enough to avoid leaving any marks behind. This wasn’t for him. 

He slid his tongue across his pec until he reached the peak of his nipple, Zuko tensing under his hands. “Does this feel good?” Sokka asked and took the nub softly between his teeth without waiting for an answer.

“It feels fine,” he said, each word punctuated with heaving breaths. When Sokka laid his tongue flat against him, Zuko whimpered, and Sokka started to sink.

“Oh, Zuko, if Mai ever saw you like this—”

There’s a noticeable hitch in Zuko’s breath, and the lanterns glowed brighter, Sokka’s shadow blocking the deep orange from illuminating Zuko’s form. “Will she really be this— this—”

“She’ll touch you,” Sokka promised, running his hands down his torso before digging his thumbs into Zuko’s hips, “like this,” and Zuko keened, anchoring his shaking hands in Sokka’s hair. Sokka pressed his face into Zuko’s toned stomach, traced his bellybutton with his tongue, earning him a tug at his skull. He was delirious, lost. “You like this?” he breathed, kissing lower, right above the band of Zuko’s shorts, his cock tenting against them.

“Sokka,” he gasped, loosening his grip on his hair. “Sokka?”

He raised his head, suddenly alert at the tone of uncertainty in Zuko’s voice.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” he prodded, and Zuko growled and pushed his head back into the pillow. Sokka rubbed gentle circles into his hips with his thumbs, growing more and more sure in his silence that he would do anything he asked, a fact that didn’t feel as scary as it should have. “Tell me what you want, Zuko.”

“Please,” he choked out, gently pushing Sokka’s face back down against him. Heat spread like wildfire and gathered low in Sokka’s stomach as Zuko begged. “Please.”

But, even through the haze, Sokka needed him to say it. “Do you want me to—”

“Yes,” he answered, then swallowed thickly. “I want to know how it feels. Please, Sokka.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he reassured, delicately running his thumbs under the band of Zuko’s shorts as he crawled backward to lie comfortably between his legs. In one motion, he tugged them down, Zuko’s cock springing free. Grasping his thighs, Sokka gifted a line of kisses across hip flexor, enticed by the heady scent of him. “This is what she’ll do,” he whispered, broken, and licked a line up his cock, from base to tip.

Zuko’s hips stuttered and he gasped, one hand leaving Sokka’s head to clutch at the sheet. “Sokka,” he started, and Sokka took the head into his mouth, heavy against his tongue. “ _Fuck_ , Sokka.”

Sokka splayed a hand across Zuko’s abdomen, searching for purchase as he took him deeper, and Zuko’s hand was suddenly wrapped around his, and Sokka had to pull off from the shock of it. When he glanced up towards him, he found his own hand, his own fingers locked between Zuko’s. His heart caught in his throat.

“ _Spirits_ , you’re perfect, Zuko,” he gasped, and brought their hands down to his mouth, kissed their fingers reverently. “She’ll tell you you’re perfect.”

“Sokka, Sokka,” Zuko chanted, rough and breathy. 

“Zuko,” he said, hot against him, “you’re beautiful.”

* * *

He was being steamed alive, stretched out across hot coals. The coals shifted, and Sokka raised his head to find them, golden and fiery, peering down at him. 

“We need to get up, Sokka,” they said, and Sokka blinked until his memory resurfaced. He was in Zuko’s cot, clutched to him like a giant pentapus. For a moment, last night crawled through him, ice in his veins, but melted as soon as Zuko smiled shyly down at him. 

Clearing his throat, he rolled sideways onto his feet, stretching as he stood, and threw a wink back at Zuko as he rolled out his shoulders. He barely held himself back from jumping him as Zuko blushed down to his chest.

The morning was quiet, languid, and they helped adjust each other’s armor in silence, exchanging heated looks before quickly looking away. But as soon as they were ready to leave the barracks, the ache in Sokka’s chest flared. He was in too deep. It was too late. 

He had to go find Mai.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUMMARY of section 2: some more making out, Sokka starts to give Zuko a blowjob before there's a fade to black (it's nothing to wild), there's angsty fluff with Sokka calling Zuko beautiful/perfect/etc. <3
> 
> you can find me on tumblr by the same name as here- paintedlight!


	8. An Angry Spirit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one got so long I had to cut it in half! so the next chapter should be done soon :) 
> 
> enjoy!

The warden’s quarters were in the same structure as the prison offices, built on the roof of the Boiling Rock like a jewel in a crown. If Mai was anywhere this early, it was there.

He just wasn’t sure how to get her alone. The steam cut through the coolness of the morning, beading droplets onto Sokka’s arms. He rubbed them off as he walked the perimeter of the roof. Should he wait for her to come out? Should he just… knock on the office door and ask for her? She’d probably go along with any cover story he could dream up. 

But would she listen to what he had to say?

Did he even _know_ what he had to say?

His stomach churned, half with memories of Zuko writhing beneath him, the other half with the vivid regret of having to be there at all. Because when it all came down to it, it was _his_ fault. 

Everything. 

_He_ was the one who had planned the failed attack on Caldera where his dad was captured and sent to this spirits-damned prison, and _he_ was the one who agreed to betray the trust of the Prince of the Fire Nation, and then _fell_ for the fucking Prince of the Fire Nation.

Back in Makapu, Aunt Wu had told his fortune— that he’d “live a life full of pain and misery.” That he’d do it to himself. 

He had tried not to give it any weight, but it still ate at him. Because, well. He’d done it again, hadn’t he?

Ever since he woke up, that one moment had replayed in his mind in a loop: his hand buried in Zuko’s soft hair, both of them gasping, Zuko looking up at him with something like desperation, as he— s _pirits_ , he was so stupid— promised him that he’d never— 

Sokka jumped as the door to the warden’s offices slammed shut.

“You,” Mai commanded, storming towards him, hardly bothering with civil theatrics. “Escort me to the balcony.”

“Oh, yeah! Uh,” he tried to clear his throat, but his voice cracked like a teenager. “Of course! Right this way.”

Mai strode a step ahead of him, like she was escorting _him_. She looked like a spirit, her long hair unadorned and flowing down her back, her robes white and gold, which was the most unnerving part. The lack of any dark shades made her, somehow, completely unfamiliar. 

Her. Zuko’s future wife.

“You shouldn’t have been up there. You looked ridiculous,” Mai hissed as they entered the stairwell and started down the flight. “We don’t even keep guards on the roof anymore. Too many jump. _And_ you were slouching. Guards don’t slouch.” When they turned towards the balcony entrance, Sokka froze, his brain finally catching up. “You would have been caught if I hadn’t—”

“Mai, wait!” He grabbed her arm and yanked her back.

She tore from his grasp and scowled. “What?” 

“Zuko’s in the yard! He could see us from the balcony, so we have to—”

“Can we just get this over with?” she sighed, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall, just out of view of anyone in the yard. Sokka relaxed. Kind of.

He pulled his shoulders back and forced himself to meet her eyes, swallowing down his doubts. 

“We need to talk about Zuko.”

Mai squinted. “What about Zuko?”

“He’s just,” he sputtered, gesturing as if he could pull words out of the air. Any words, really. “He’s… so young, you know?”

“He’s 20.”

“Yeah, sure, but are you sure immediately going back and getting married is what’s best for him? I mean, if it’s arranged anyway, you might as well wait until, I don’t know, maybe _after_ the war—“

“Why do you care?” Mai stepped towards him, pushing him into the corner. “Are you backing out?”

“No! No, I just—”

“You know, Sokka, I could tell him you’re working with me,” she smirked as Sokka gritted his teeth. “That you’re getting rid of him, because you think he’s too dangerous to be around your friends.”

His blood boiled as hard as the lake outside. 

“Well I’ll have something to tell him too,” he spat. If she was gonna be that way, he could give it right back. “You don’t even love him! You’re taking him against his will because you want to marry him for his money and status and—”

“Shut up!” she said, leaning in so closely that he could feel her breath against his face. “Think of your _father_. I should have everything ready for you to leave by tomorrow night. But how would your friends feel if you show back up to the temple empty-handed?” He flinched when Mai’s hand laid heavy on top of his shoulder guard. “I know what you want, Sokka. Recognition. Your desperation is all over your face. Why fail all of them, when you could return in glory?”

Sokka’s hands tingled as he balled them into fists. Mai was wrong. All he wanted was everyone he cared about to be safe. His dad. Suki.

Zuko.

His heart lurched in his chest. Steeling himself, he shrugged Mai’s hand off his shoulder.

“Fine,” he growled and pointed a finger in her face, “but you listen to me! Don’t push Zuko too hard, okay?” Sokka stared into her eyes, refused to even blink. “If you frighten him, he’ll close up, tight as a clam! Or, he’ll just,” he flung his hands up in the air, “go cold!” 

Sokka tore away from the corner and headed down the stairs toward the commons, stopping halfway to look back at Mai, still looming in the stairwell like an angry spirit.

“And please,” he said, glaring again for good measure, “ _never_ act like you can hold my friends over me again.”

* * *

Before he could make it to the food hall to bury his sorrows in fruit buns, Sokka spotted Suki motioning him behind the stairs. She seemed excited, the sparkle in her green eyes a soothing balm for his nerves. As he snuck over, he concentrated on keeping himself from collapsing on the spot and squatted low, out of the view of anyone in the commons.

“So I overheard some guards in the yard earlier, and one of— um,” Suki said, concern shadowing her enthusiasm, “you don’t look so good, Sokka.” 

Ha. What an understatement.

Sokka leaned against the back of the stairs and slid down the wall, propping his arms on his knees. Suki sat beside him and wrapped her hand around his elbow. 

“Are you okay?”

He rubbed an eye with the back of his hand and shrugged. “I’m fine. Great. Just getting a little bit nervous about everything, I guess.”

“Well, here’s one less thing to be nervous about.” Suki squeezed his arm and smiled encouragingly. “New prisoners are being shipped in today. _War_ prisoners!” 

The hollow space in his chest filled up then drained out just as fast. “You think it’s my dad?” he asked, his voice scratchy.

Of course it was him. And if his dad’s here, it’s official. 

There was no turning back.

“It has to be him!” Suki exclaimed, sliding her hand up to his shoulder and shaking him a little. Sokka almost felt guilty with how little he was reacting— Suki must be so confused. He sighed and forced a grin.

“Suki, you’re the best ex a guy could have.”

“I know.” 

Sokka huffed, and Suki withdrew to cross her arms, surveyed him with an eyebrow raised. “You know what else I am?”

“You’re, uh,” he stammered, clambering to interpret the omniscient look on her face, “the best friend a guy could have?”

“I’m also the _leader_ of the Kyoshi Warriors.”

“Oh! Yes, the best leader of the—”

“Which means,” she explained, “that you can trust me with your plan.” Her eyebrows furrowed authoritatively, the way they did whenever she addressed the warriors. “You still haven’t told me, Sokka.”

His mouth went dry. “I—”

“And if you’re worried about protecting me, you do realize I would feel more safe if I knew what we were walking into?” She planted her hands on her hips with an exhale. “I _could_ just ask Zuko—”

“No! No need to ask Zuko,” he scrambled, cursing himself for being so transparent as Suki’s eyebrows knit further together.

“Why can’t—”

“Because, uh,” he grabbed at the back of his neck but only succeeded in ramming his hand awkwardly into the helmet. “He… isn’t good at explaining it?”

Suki leveled him with a glare, and Sokka’s stomach dropped. Somehow, she knew. She knew he was a lousy excuse for a friend, a coward, a backstabbing—

She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You haven’t told him either.”

“Um…” Sokka got stuck halfway through a shrug, his shoulders inches from his ears. _Spirits_ , that was close. “…not yet?”

“Sokka,” Suki said softly and held his shoulders. A lump formed in his throat at the kindness in her gaze, dragging him in like an undertow he was too weak to fight against. “I know you feel you have to shoulder this all on your own, but it’s okay to need other people. And you _do_ need other people. We want to support you, okay?”

Sokka swallowed the lump and nodded, blinking back tears. He truly didn’t deserve her. 

But she didn’t understand. 

“We’ve been back here too long,” she said, slapping his arm as she stood back up. “I’ll meet you near the gondola when the transfers land in the yard. Just tell me the plan tonight. Got it?”

He nodded as she walked away. “Got it.”

* * *

Suki’s intel was right. The moment he stepped into the yard, Sokka peered up through the steam to find a giant Fire Nation airship floating by the lip of the volcano, a few hazy figures descending a ramp anchored beside the gondola. Clusters of prisoners stood by pointing, and a couple guards had paused in their rounds to watch. 

None of them were Zuko.

For the millionth time that day, Sokka’s stomach churned. And sure, maybe he had hoped to avoid Zuko a little bit once he got to the yard— he hadn’t had any time or space to think yet, not about last night, not about the plan— but he had expected there to at least be a Zuko to avoid. 

Why wasn’t he there? If the airship was already depositing its prisoners, it must have arrived a while ago.

Why hadn’t Zuko come to tell him?

Unless— unless he was patrolling the periphery!

Sokka jogged around the prison, just slow enough to hopefully not catch the suspicion of any of the other guards, ignoring the glaring fact that the periphery of the yard, that long loop around the Boiling Rock, only took about eight minutes to walk.

As he rounded the corner, he spotted one guard manning the stretch by the back wall of the prison. 

His heart fluttered, so intensely he had to pause and catch his breath. It was definitely Zuko. Sokka would know him anywhere— the overly formal gait, the balled fists. But he was here, which meant he had seen the airship. There was no reason for him to keep that from him, except for one, and Sokka numbed as the thought pulled him under— 

Zuko was avoiding _him_.

“Hey, fellow guard!” he called out, without even a hint of a plan, and ran to Zuko’s side. Sokka whipped his helmet off and carried it against his hip.

Without turning to look at him, Zuko stiffened and kept marching forward. The movement shattered his delicately constructed composure, and Sokka panicked. He couldn’t be— he couldn’t.

Desperate for contact, Sokka reached out and grasped his shoulder guard. He relaxed at the touch, so Sokka slid his hand down to the skin of his bicep, uncharacteristically cool, and gave a gentle squeeze. Zuko stopped halfway through a stride, seeming to steel himself. Sokka mirrored him and held his breath.

Finally, Zuko removed his helmet, pain flickering across his features before giving him a half-hearted smile. “Hey, Sokka.”

“Hey, Zuko,” he croaked. Face heating, he cleared his throat and meant to pull his hand away, he really did, but only ended up sliding it further down to cradle Zuko’s forearm, just above the guard. Both of Zuko’s fists were still clenched.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen it,” he continued, “but, um, there’s a Fire Nation airship here dropping off prisoners. They should be loading up the gondola right about now. Suki told me she overheard some guards saying they’re shipping in war prisoners. It could be my dad, so I— I came to find you.”

Zuko’s expression softened, and some weight lifted off Sokka’s shoulders. “That’s great,” he smiled, small and earnest. But something was off. “Want to head to the front?”

Zuko gently tugged his arm from Sokka’s grasp and marched ahead. Sokka’s fingers tingled as he lowered his hand back to his side, the empty space in his chest widening, and trailed after him.

They walked in silence, and Sokka realized he didn’t know how much longer they had together, just he and Zuko. Not exactly. Between all their fake guard shifts, meeting with his dad soon, and meeting with Suki that night, he may not see him again today. Awake, at least. And tomorrow—

If his dad’s on that gondola, Sokka would meet with Mai tomorrow. He would escape _tomorrow_.

Zuko was a warm presence beside him, and Sokka ached to grab his hand, pull him close, and kiss him again. Just the two of them, this time. Without Mai’s name shoved in between.

But because of last night, he wouldn’t. He had to remind Zuko of what he really wanted, of what he said he wanted: for it to work out with Mai. For a future with her.

Later. Not now. But he’d do it.

Later.

“Are you okay?”

Sokka flinched. Zuko’s gaze bored heavy into the side of his cheek, so intense that he was scared to look over at him, scared that his betrayal would show on his face, or worse— that he’d see contempt in Zuko’s eyes. Evidence that he saw through it all, that he hated him.

Instead, he found him worried, his creased forehead appearing beneath his bangs as the wind blew, his lips curved in a slight frown. No hint of suspicion. 

It was almost worse.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Sokka lied. He tried to smile reassuringly, but the muscles in his cheeks fought against him, so tight it hurt. “I just hope all this has been worth it.” 

In the patchy sunlight, the gold of Zuko’s eyes seemed to glow. Sweat gathered at his brow, and his hair was messy from the helmet, a few waves curling in odd directions. Affection cut like a knife in Sokka’s chest, and he sped to memorize all that he could, just in case. The single freckle to the left of his nose. The dip of his widow’s peak. Just in case. The deep black of his eyelashes, the perpetual pout of his bottom lip. 

Something shifted in Zuko’s face and he nodded, turning to look forward again, away from Sokka. His throat closed.

_Spirits_ , he didn’t have enough time.

Time was really up as they breached the main yard, hiding back under their helmets. A canyon had opened up between them, rather than the couple of inches that separated them, an invisible force keeping their arms from brushing. Meanwhile, all eyes were stuck on the gondola inching slowly down the wire, the prisoners swarmed, anxious for fresh meat. 

_Meat._

“Oh, I almost forgot, I, uh, meant to give you this,” Sokka said, clearing his throat and pulling out the jerky he had tucked in his chest piece on the way to find him. Zuko stared at him a moment, unreadable, before taking it.

“Thank you, Sokka.”

“Yeah, of course! I mean, you’ve always done that for me,” Sokka rambled, “or have, since we got here, I mean. I thought I’d do the same for you! And I know you like it spicy, so I got some you’d like, I mean I think—”

“Hey, you two!”

Sokka and Zuko both jumped as Suki materialized directly behind them.

“ _Spirits,_ could you be any sneakier?” Sokka whispered, elbowing Suki in the side. She winked, and the weight on his shoulders eased for a moment.

“Oh, uh,” Zuko started, somehow standing up straighter than before. “Suki?” He raised a hand in his trademark awkward wave. “I’m Zuko.”

Suki’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline, and Sokka barely suppressed a laugh. Oh, here we go.

“Yeah, I know. We met a long time ago.”

“Wait,” he tilted his head to the side, squinting, “what? We did?”

Suki’s expression darkened, and Zuko blanched. 

“Yeah,” she accused, crossing her arms. “You kind of burned down my village.”

“Oh…” Zuko mumbled, his good eye wide as he looked anywhere but at Suki. He studied his boots for a few seconds before abruptly facing her again. 

“Sorry about that,” he said, sincerely. "Nice to see you again.”

Sokka couldn’t help but giggle as Suki shuffled through a range of emotions—anger, confusion, astonishment— and finally settled on amusement. Seeing them together warmed Sokka to the bone. 

He wished this wasn’t the last time.

A loud creak from the gondola interrupted the reunion. It doubled in speed, now halfway to the landing on the balcony. More prisoners shuffled into the yard and packed together like sardines. Despite the approaching gondola, Suki’s sights were set on the Agni Kai arena, which the crowd avoided as if it were rotting fish.

“This may seem out of the blue,” she said, all mirth gone, “but it’s a good thing you’re dad’s not a firebender. There’s no way he could ever, well,” she huffed and squinted against the sun, filtering through the steam. “I had to watch an Agni Kai recently. It was awful.”

“What happened?” Sokka asked, keeping an eye on Zuko, who’d gone still and quiet beside him.

Suki tugged her ponytail loose, retying it as she spoke. “From what I’ve heard, they’re supposed to fight until one burns the other. It’s supposed to be an honorable fight, but the one I saw…” she paled and shook her head. “The guards played dirty. I hope the guy’s okay.” 

Sokka winced. “Yikes.”

“Yeah, yikes.”

Zuko was still frozen and facing the gondola. His hands shook in their fists, and Sokka was a breath away from asking him if he was alright when his stomach turned, Suki’s words rushing back.

_They’re supposed to fight,_ she said, _until one burns the other._

Nausea building in his gut, Sokka stared at side of Zuko’s helmet. He could almost reconstruct the mark from memory, from inner eye, down his cheek, across to his ear. That unforgiving shade of red. The deep gold of his iris, half-buried in the thickened skin of the scar. Sokka’s heart stopped as the truth slammed into him.

Someone had done that to him. On purpose.

The gondola screeched as it came to a halt at the balcony, and Sokka swallowed down bile. The crowd had thickened so that everyone’s shoulders knocked together, shoving for a better view.

It was too much. Too fucking much was happening. If the universe was fair, he would reach out and take Zuko’s hand. For both of their sake’s.  But it wasn't, so he didn't, his heart in his throat.

They craned their necks to watch a pair of guards open the door to the gondola, and the new prisoners, not yet dressed in the red rags of the Boiling Rock, stepped out one by one, hands tied behind their backs, and, nope. The first three weren’t him. 

Sokka ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached. The next man limped off. The next man wasn’t him either. 

Or the next. 

Fuck.

“Where is he?” he rasped, his voice barely audible over the jeering crowd. Suki grabbed his hand and he clutched on tightly, staring at the gondola, afraid that it would disappear if he blinked.

Two more men stumbled out. Strangers. 

And then no one.

“Is that it?” he asked, desperation latched to his tone. If Mai _lied_ —

Suki crushed his hand. “I’m sorry, Sokka.”

One of the guards at the entrance yelled something into the gondola, pointing firmly towards the balcony. After a moment, one final man stepped out onto the landing. Long hair, braids framing his face. Dressed in blue.

“That’s him!” Sokka exclaimed, hardly holding himself back from running straight for the stairs, past the guards and all their fire. Even in chains, his dad stood tall. Like a warrior.

Tears piled at the edge of vision, and for the first time that day, Sokka knew— that the plan would work, that they’d survive, that everyone would be okay. 

That it had all been worth it.

Sokka tracked his dad’s movements like a cobra hawk, from the balcony to the yard, determined to locate his cell as quickly as soon as it was assigned. As Suki was corralled back inside with the rest of the crowd, he turned to ask Zuko to follow him. 

But Zuko was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh Sokka..... we're really in it now
> 
> and yes I gave Suki green eyes <3 
> 
> did some line editing & reposted quietly on 12/19, but no plot-related content was changed!
> 
> come visit me on tumblr <3 I'm paintedlight there too!


	9. Ice Forms On The Surface Of The Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (OOPS I had to delete & repost because I put the wrong post date lol)
> 
> (if you've read the last chapter before 12/19/20, I made some line-edits so take a peek if you want some updated prose!)
> 
> well here it is, friends, Chapter 9, AKA Chapter 8 part 2, AKA more drama!
> 
> enjoy Hakoda content, the ultimate dilf

The moment the transfers were locked up and the guards cleared the hallway, Sokka booked it to his dad’s cell. 

He swung open the door, foolishly, forgoing a double-check of the hallway. Sokka’s eyes burned as he let out a shaky breath. 

Dad was really here. 

Hakoda leaped from his seat on the cot and faced him, a courageous stubbornness etched into the lines on his face. And even with his dad glaring at him, jaw set, preparing to defend himself against what he obviously thought was some Fire Nation asshole, Sokka felt safer than he had in… years, actually. 

He deflated against the door as soon as it shut. “Thank goodness you’re okay!” he gasped, awe in his voice.

But the awe must not have translated. Hakoda took a step forward, his fist held up in a warning. “If you take one step closer,” he growled, “you’ll see just how ‘okay’ I am.”

_Oh._ Oh shit, not this again.

“Dad,” Sokka urged as he scrambled to remove his helmet, lifting the other hand in a gesture of surrender, “it’s me.”

His heart beat wildly in his chest as he stared. Finally, Hakoda’s mouth fell open as tears filled his eyes, and before Sokka could say anything else he was pulled into a tight embrace. Sokka dropped the helmet, clanging loud on the metal floor, and wrapped his arms around him.

“Sokka,” Hakoda breathed, choking on tears, “my son.” 

Sokka’s fingers clutched at the scratchy fabric of the prison rags as he hooked his chin onto his dad’s shoulder. Despite the change of clothes, the familiar scent of sea salt and musk still clung to him. The smell of home. 

Hakoda released him from the hug and clasped his arms, chuckling. “You know, Sokka, you should be more careful with that guard outfit on,” he grinned, eyes puffy. “I almost punched you in the gut.”

“Yeah,” Sokka laughed, wiping tears from his face with his forearm, “I ran into that problem earlier.”

His dad stilled, stunned out of the tearful reunion. “You’ve been breaking into other cells?”

The laugh caught in his throat at his dad’s concerned squint, and he motioned towards the wall. “Yes, actually, but um.” He scratched the back of his neck. “We should probably sit down for this.” 

Sokka pulled his knees to his chest and slid to the floor, and Hakoda sat cross-legged beside him. 

“So, uh, starting from the top, I guess,” Sokka said, clasping his sweaty palms together. His dad nodded for him to continue, so he cleared his throat and tried to piece a few sentences together ahead of time. “A few months ago,” he started, unsure if he was beginning the story too late or too early, “Aang, Katara, and I were on Kyoshi Island where we befriended the Kyoshi Warriors.”

Sokka jumped when Hakoda slapped his knee.

“The Kyoshi Warriors!” he exclaimed. "That’s who that was. I met a few of them in the prison in Caldera before I was transferred here.”

“So _that’s_ where they are,” Sokka said, scratching his chin. “They singled out Suki, their leader, too. She’s here, actually, and she’s going to escape with us."

Hakoda threw his arm over his shoulders and squeezed. “Great! We’ll need all the help we can get.”

Sokka’s heart raced. He rubbed his sweaty palms into his shorts and cleared his throat, again, annoyed at himself for being unable to meet his dad’s eyes. 

_Tui and La_ , it’s not like he was introducing him to his boyfriend. Or confessing to murder. That would be ridiculous. Sokka was doing neither of those things.

He picked at the cuticle of his thumb nail. “And, uh, you know Prince Zuko?”

“The son of the Fire Lord?” Hakoda’s voice dropped a register. “I don’t know him, but I know of him.”

“Well,” Sokka muttered, “he’s here too.”

Hakoda grunted. “Sounds like a major problem.”

“Actually,” Sokka said, structuring the truth as clinically as he could, “Zuko’s on our side now. He’s really proven himself and, well,” he stared at the ceiling and his stomach churned harder by the second. “Zuko and I, we’re kind of…” _What in Tui’s name are we?_ “Friends.”

Silence and steam floated thick in the air.

“Friends?”

“Yeah, friends.” Sokka readjusted his arm guards. They rubbed against his arms the wrong way, digging into the skin at his wrist. He wished he could wear his hand wraps again. “But he has to stay behind.”

“Hm,” Hakoda hummed. 

Sokka waited for another retort, some sort of fatherly encouragement, but it didn’t come. Just a _hm_. 

He fiddled with the arm guards again. How hadn’t he noticed the discomfort sooner?

He heard his dad’s tongue click against the roof of his mouth. Sokka whipped his head around to look at him, and his eyebrows were scrunched together like they did when he studied blueprints, battle strategies. Like when he tried to solve a puzzle.

“Well,” Hakoda said, oddly neutral, “it sounds like you have a plan.”

The plan. Right. Sokka chewed at his lip, reminded himself of just that— that the plan was the plan. It was what’s best for everyone; even for Zuko. Even if it didn’t feel like it. 

And it definitely did _not_ feel like it.

“I don’t have all the details yet, but I do have someone on the inside.” Sokka shoved down his hurts, steeled himself for battle, and latched onto his dad’s free forearm in a warrior’s handshake. “When I come and get you tomorrow night,” he swore, “you, Suki and I are getting out of here.”

Hakoda returned the gesture, although not very tightly, and while peering questionably at him. He shivered, feeling exposed, suddenly. 

“Sokka,” he started, reminiscent of the tone he used when Sokka was nine and stole Katara’s last sea prune. Sokka’s blood pressure spiked. “Are you sure Zuko shouldn’t be coming with us, too?”

Bound by the warrior’s handshake, he couldn’t lie. But strangely enough, Sokka didn’t think he would have lied, even if he could. Not about this.

“Honestly,” Sokka admitted, “I wish he was. I _really_ do, Dad. But he has his own way out of here. I think,” he swallowed the tears away, but his voice still warbled. “I think that’s what’s best for him.”

Hakoda must have heard what he needed to hear, because he clasped Sokka’s arm firmly, finally, and nodded. 

“If you’re sure, son.” He retracted the arm across his shoulders only to slap Sokka’s back, making unnervingly intentional eye contact. “But let me know if anything changes.”

“Yeah,” he promised, and stood up, stretching the ache from his muscles but also to center himself for a moment, out from under his dad’s knowing gaze. A blessing and a curse. But it was done, and he had responded well enough.

The echo of a brawl, crashes and shouts barging up from the commons, filled the hallway and screeched through the door. Sokka whistled. It was good timing— he could leave the cell while other guards were occupied. Plus, it was getting late.

One down, two to go.

“Dad, I need to go,” he apologized. “I promised Suki I’d run everything by her tonight.”

Hakoda rose from the floor with a grunt. “Then I’ll see you soon, Sokka,” he said, smiling, and tugged him into his arms again. Sokka closed his eyes and breathed in his dad’s salt-spray scent, let it settle in his lungs. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

* * *

“He’s going to stay behind.”

“No,” Suki scoffed, her finger jabbed an inch from his face, “you’re _leaving_ him behind.”

Sokka stepped back, recalling with frightening clarity to the moment ( _moments_ , plural, if he wasn’t kidding himself) eons ago, now, when Suki’d bested him at Kyoshi Island, her fan sharpened and deadly against his throat. Her eyes hadn’t been wild with the thrill of victory, but cold, precise. Deadly. Like they were now. 

When he crept into Suki’s cell and rehearsed what he’d told his dad word for word, he hadn’t expected an argument. But he _also_ had not expected himself to gush like a madman about Zuko— about how he’d made tea for everyone at the Western Air Temple, how he’d stashed his whale-bone choker in the storage closet ceiling, how he always brought him food between shifts. About how they’d become friends. 

Somewhere in the verbal flood, Sokka realized he needed Suki to approve of Zuko as desperately as he needed water. He needed someone else to care what happened to him, to see the plan for the betrayal that it was. 

So as he braced against the cold wall, under the weight of her sneer, Sokka deserved the lashing. He welcomed the fight, the emotional bruises. The black and blue.

Because he agreed with everything Suki said.

“I wouldn’t just leave him, Suki,” he pled, even as he hated himself for leaving him. “Like I was _trying_ to explain, I have someone on the inside—“

“And who in Kyoshi’s name could that be, Sokka? Someone he _wants_ to be reunited with?” Her pointed finger stabbed through the tunic into the flesh beneath his chest guard. “Clearly not, since you’re tricking him into this!”

Sokka winced, wondering distantly if Suki’s fingernail would brand an angry half-moon onto his sternum. “Why are you suddenly defending him?” he shouted, his spirit detached from his body. “You said it yourself— he tried to burn down your village!”

Her eyes widened in disbelief, the angry sunset glowing through the tiny window, reddening the edges of her hair and the shadows painting violence across her cheeks. 

“And _you_ said that he betrayed his nation, as the _prince_ , to help Aang, and saved all of you in the process, almost dying himself. And now, he’s here, in the Fire Nation’s most formidable prison, just to help _you_ save your father,” she hissed, her voice dangerously low as her fingernail drew blood. “He’s your _friend_ , Sokka. You can try and deny it, but that sounds like a change of heart to me.”

The blow hit, hard, and Sokka rolled his eyes to break free of Suki’s gaze. He just needed a second to think. He picked out one particular bolt in the wall across the cell— the third bolt from the ceiling— to lock onto. It was grey, metal, round. Suki was right, but she didn’t understand. There was no plan B, no chance for bargaining. They were imprisoned in the center of a volcano with only one way out.

To leave, Zuko had to stay. And when it all finished, Zuko would be relieved he did.

“Sokka, look at me.” 

He swapped bolts, fixated on the second from the ceiling. 

“Sokka,” Suki growled. 

That bolt was also round and metallic. Hm.

“Sokka, he’ll be in danger the moment we leave.”

“No,” he spat, or had attempted to before his voice failed him, breaking into a turbulent whisper. “Mai said he’ll—”

Crescents dug into his jaw as Suki gripped his chin and forced him to face her again. “Who’s Mai?” she demanded. “Your ‘person on the inside?’”

Sokka opened his mouth to say _Mai’s the warden’s niece_ , or maybe _Mai’s an old friend of Zuko’s_ , or maybe something even more inane if he could swing it, but he choked on the truth until it poured from his lips like steam.

“She’s Zuko’s girlfriend.”

Suki’s grasp on his chin slowly loosened as she squinted at him. He saw the moment the realization hit her; she gasped like she’d been punched in the stomach, a slippery puddle of tears gathering at her tear ducts. Sokka bit the flesh of his cheek to withhold his own tears as Suki’s hand softened to cup his jaw.

“You _like_ him.”

He did, but it felt like more than that. It felt vast, unconquerable, thrilling. Terrifying. It felt like the ocean.

“They’re arranged to get married,” he started, numbly, “and she’s trying to keep him safe from… the consequences. Of defecting. She’s… getting us out in exchange for him,” Sokka said, and a frigid wind fell over the waters. “It’s the only way I know how to make sure we all make it out of here alive, okay?” 

Suki blinked, alarmed. Ice began to form on the surface of the sea. 

“So my feelings _don’t_ matter.”

She shook her head, reached for his hand. “Sokka—”

He jerked his hand away and slid past her to the door of the cell. The handle stung, sharp, glacial against his palm. 

“They don’t, Suki,” he whispered, halfway out the door. “We leave tomorrow.”

* * *

The night shifts began immediately after the sunset. The prisoners were locked up in their cells, most of the guards back in the main barracks, all settling into their cots.

But not Sokka.

He figured if he paced the hallways long enough, triple-checked every floor, enough time would pass. Zuko would wait up for him for a little while, but as the moon rose higher into the night sky, surely the guy would just shrug, say _fuck it_ , and go to sleep. 

After that, Sokka would just have to be sneaky. With luck, Zuko would actually be asleep, and he’d be able to remove his armor without waking the beast. 

Sokka didn’t like his odds.

Plus, ever since he’d left Suki’s cell, he hadn’t stopped shivering. It was exhausting, the spasms wearing at his muscles as his mind spun like a whirlpool, around and around, pulling him under, drowning him. He knew what he had to tell Zuko, but the sentences blurred together and Sokka choked on seafoam, kicked his feet. And right before the ocean claimed him, a final image—

_You’re right, Sokka_ , Zuko said, eyes as bright as the sun, _I do love her._

The creak of a door startled him from his trance, and Sokka looked down at his hand on the doorknob, his own feet at the threshold of the overflow barracks. The rows of empty cots were haunting under the lanterns’ dim light. 

No, Zuko wasn’t asleep; he stood, arms crossed, staring out the window at the boiling lake. He hadn’t turned around when Sokka entered. He hadn’t even flinched. 

The door closed heavy, bouncing off the tall ceiling as Sokka stepped into the room. 

“Whatcha thinking about?” he heard himself ask as his feet carried him towards Zuko. His disembodied voice sounded casual, almost coquettish. “Life? Love?” His stomach soured. “Mai, maybe?”

Zuko finally turned around, and all the breath left Sokka’s lungs at once. The full moon framed his head, white light bleaching his hair. 

“No,” he said, halfway between fury and confusion, and Sokka dizzied. “Why would you think that?”

“I…” The words died on his tongue. The moonlight behind him shuttered Zuko’s face in shadows, and his heart lurched against his ribcage. “You just seem to smile more when you mention her, you know?”

As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he traced Zuko’s features as they softened. He didn’t know when it happened— when they drew so close. He shivered under Zuko’s gaze, glancing down at his lips, pinched in a tight line.

“Zuko,” he whispered, “wouldn’t you want to know what it feels like?” He swayed, unsteady, willing to fall on his knees and beg if it would make him understand. “To be with someone you… care about, planning the future together?”

“I’d rather just stay here,” he bit out and uncrossed his arms, balling his hands into fists by his sides. 

“But you’re so lucky, Zuko!” Sokka pled. He thought of Yue’s shitty fiancé, how her arranged marriage would have been loveless and cold. “The woman you’re supposed to be with loves you! That’s rare!”

“But,” he sputtered, his eyebrow furrowing, “I’m not sure… if I love her.”

Sokka tamped down the hope that blazed in his chest. Cursed it. It was absolutely not the time, not the place. Not the plan. 

“You _do_ love her,” he urged. 

“How do you know?” Zuko frowned. Sokka wanted to kiss it off of his face. 

But he didn’t. Instead, he held out his hand, trembling in the space between them, and started a list. “Well, first of all, you’re always looking out the windows. People who are _longing_ do that, buddy,” he said, one finger down. “You sigh in your sleep a lot, which _definitely_ means something!” Two fingers. He could do this. “And you—”

“But if I say I don’t love her,” Zuko hissed, pressing threateningly up against him, chest to chest. Sokka held his breath, tensed at the passion in his eyes. “If I say that I love someone else. Would you still want me to marry her?”

_Spirits,_ he was so fucking stubborn.

“Zuko, you _will_ love her.”

Something shifted in Zuko’s expression and he clenched his jaw, sharp and sudden. Before he knew what was happening, Zuko had grabbed him and was shoving him back, fast, and Sokka tripped on his own feet as he shuffled backward between the cots.

“Zuko, what are you—”

Zuko’s eyes were on fire, his tears reflecting the golden flames.

“Zuko, wait!” 

Zuko reached for the door handle, his lips trembling in a snarl.

“Zuko!” Sokka cried as Zuko shoved him through the door, hands burning hot on his shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ouch ouch ouch!
> 
> only one more chapter til the end of Part 1 AHHHH
> 
> visit me on tumblr, I'm paintedlight there too <3


	10. Prince of the Hearth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all aren't ready!!!
> 
> (sorry not sorry)
> 
> this chapter is the final chapter in Part One, featuring bakoda crumbs !

Sokka’s heart stampeded the moment he broke into consciousness. He was alone. Sickly yellow light poured over the cots, the rays saturated with dust. His hands trembled as he stood, tied on his armor, and left the barracks for the last time.

Today was the day.

He forced spicy komodo chicken down his throat and wondered where Zuko had run off to. He worried about him as he paced the halls. His sweaty fingers, digging around the pocket of his shorts, slid across Mai’s ruby hairpin as he walked, but it wasn’t as grounding as he hoped it would be; when she materialized by the stairwell in the commons and grabbed his arm, Sokka swore his spirit left his body. 

And he was, thanks to a lovely encounter with Hei Bai a few months ago, too familiar with that sensation.

He followed Mai wordlessly down the stairs, grinding his molars harder and harder as they descended into the prison. A deep ache climbed up the side of his jaw. Suspended in a cloud of soot, he choked on dry heat when they reached the lowest floor, dug out beneath the surface of the boiling lake. It was dark and grimy— nightmarish, really— and Sokka almost slammed into Mai’s back when she stopped to open a door to their left.

Another cell. But it was worse than the ones on the main floors, built for interrogation: windowless, and instead of a cot, a single metal chair sat bolted to the center of the floor. Sokka’s vision blurred at the edges. So _this_ was where—

Mai cleared her throat and the room shifted back into focus. She stood behind the chair, her hand outstretched towards him.

She rolled her eyes at the hesitation. “The barrette?”

“Oh, yeah, here.” Sokka crossed the space between them on shaky legs, dropped the barrette in her palm, and stepped back again. In the claustrophobic room, she was still too close. Her glare pinned him to the spot, pinned him in place like she had when they met. He stared as she pocketed the barrette and bent down to pick up a black satchel, slouched against the floor by her feet. 

“As requested,” she drawled and tossed the bag at Sokka’s chest, the weight of it almost knocking him on his ass. His stomach swooped as he peered inside. It was full of gold, a collection of jewelry and coins.

_Tui_ help him, he had forgotten about the gold.

“Wow,” he huffed, queasy, “you weren’t joking.”

“I don’t joke.”

He blinked, stomach churning. “Of course you don’t.” It came out as more of an observation, any sarcasm evaporating as he spoke. Sokka tightened the cords on the satchel and dropped it to the floor.

“Sokka, I’m only saying this once, so listen up,” she said in a tone that insisted she didn’t give a shit if he actually listened or not.

_Spirits_ , he needed to pull himself together. He _had_ to. Because this was it— sink or swim. 

The stakes were high, and terrifying, like they were burrowing under his skin. That’s why they were called stakes, Sokka figured. They stabbed right into the heart of things. And, conspiring with Mai in this metal box, everything— every fear, expectation, hope— staked him at once. His father’s arms around him. Suki’s hand in his. Zuko’s hand on his shoulder, his face softened by the moonlight. 

He would fight for them. He’d do anything. So Sokka straightened, his jaw throbbing as he nodded for Mai to continue. 

“Listening.”

“Bring Zuko to this hallway. I don’t care how,” she instructed, her eyes razor-sharp and lined in charcoal. “I’ll be there with another guard. As you approach, I’ll tell the guard he’s an imposter and have him arrested. Once he’s restrained and in the cell, take the gold and the armor I’ll have here for your father. You’ll have to be careful getting the armor to his cell without—”

“Actually,” he interrupted, both surprised at and grateful for the steadiness of his voice. “I’ll need another set of armor. My friend Suki’s here too, and I’m not leaving without her.”

Mai paused, crossed her arms, and Sokka could imagine her eyebrows lifting underneath her bangs in thinly veiled annoyance. “Are you seriously changing the terms of the deal? Now?”

“It shouldn’t be hard to grab another set. I’ve been in the armor closet, Mai.” 

“It’s called the armory.”

“It’s too small for such a fancy name,” he said, mirrored her crossed arms, and attempted his best glare. “So do it, or the deal’s off.”

A few seconds passed. Sokka’s eyes had just started to water when Mai shrugged.

“Fine,” she sighed. “Make it harder to escape for yourself, be my guest.” She shrugged again. “My guard will meet you at the gondola with transfer paperwork. It’ll say you’re being moved to a guard position near the palace.”

He squinted at her. “Suki too?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Sokka studied her, tried to catch a flinch, some sort of hint of a lie. He found nothing; Mai was a statue. 

He ran through the plan in his head, searching for weak spots, places where the ice was thin. Smuggling the armor into the cells was one. But after that— 

“Won’t they find it suspicious I have a sack of gold with me?”

“They won’t ask questions,” Mai assured. “They’ll get you out of the Boiling Rock and into my airship, then drop you off at the temple.” She pulled a hand free from her crossed arms to study her nails. “Any other questions?”

Nope. That was it.

“One last thing,” Sokka said instead. It was the last time he’d have the chance.

Mai glanced over at him, disinterested.

“Just…” he started, but stopped to look at Mai— really look at her. She was deadly, yeah, but elegant, too. In an impressive way. A quiet mastermind. If he wasn’t so afraid of her, in the upside-down world where they were friends, he would have to admit how cool her knives were. He’d praise her eye for precision, maybe even ask for throwing lessons. Honestly, she reminded him of Zuko sometimes, with her sudden eruptions, her solemn demeanor and molten eyes. His chest tightened.

Despite everything, Sokka couldn’t blame her for loving Zuko. They had that in common. 

“Be good to him,” he rasped, finally, heart in his throat. “Keep him safe, okay?”

Mai tore away from her nails, and, against all odds, her eyes softened. She brought a fist to her palm and bowed. 

“I will.”

* * *

Sokka marched the halls, circling the commons, ground floor to top floor and back, rehearsing the plan in his head. Wishing the repetition would calm his nerves. 

It didn’t. It made him look suspicious, actually— he kept getting weird looks from a couple of passing guards on their way to the food hall. He consciously slowed his pace. After all this, he refused to get caught because of anxiety-driven walking speed. 

So that’s how, inching by at what felt like a snail-sloth’s pace, Sokka was yanked ungracefully into the third-floor stairwell. He flailed for a second before realizing the assailant was Zuko, who had pressed Sokka into the wall with one hand and torn off his own helmet with the other, shaggy hair plastered to his forehead to frame wild eyes. 

Confused, Sokka pulled his helmet off, but the moment it cleared his head Zuko cupped his face and slammed his mouth into his, hot and hard, immobilizing him against the cold metal. His knees weakened— from relief more than anything— as Zuko’s touch gradually softened, a thumb brushing over his cheek, and he suckled gently on his bottom lip. When a moan tumbled out of his mouth, Sokka startled out of the moment, suddenly hyperaware of the publicity of the stairwell.

“Woah, woah, woah,” he gasped, the shape of the words pulling his lip from Zuko’s. Heaving, he leaned his head back against the wall. The room spun. But as dizzy as he had become from the onslaught, Zuko looked almost unnervingly sober.

“Sokka, I’m…” Zuko paused and closed his eyes. When they reopened, Sokka shivered at the determination ignited within them. “I’m sorry for last night. I shouldn’t have blown up on you. I didn’t—” he swallowed, the blood drained from his face. “I didn’t burn you, did I?”

Sokka paused. _When would he have—oh._

At the delay, Zuko visibly stopped breathing, his eyes darting around Sokka’s face. His lip trembled once and Sokka couldn’t take it.

“No,” Sokka promised and grabbed Zuko’s hand. “You didn’t burn me. I was still wearing my armor, remember?” He circled his thumb against the top of his wrist, hoping it would put some color back in his cheeks. “Heat protection and all that.”

Zuko worried at his lower lip. “Still, I should have been more careful.”

“You have nothing to apol—”

“Yes,” he said, crushing Sokka’s hand in his. His voice held such conviction that it was almost unbearable. “I do.”

Sokka’s mouth went dry. Zuko was so close, he realized again. Dizzy, he nodded once, unable to break eye contact.

Zuko nodded back. “So,” he rasped, “are we okay?”

“Yeah,” Sokka choked out, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, we’re good.” He gave Zuko’s hand a final squeeze before sliding his helmet back on. Unease burned low in his gut as the world narrowed back down to the slit in the helmet. 

It was time. 

“We have work to do, actually,” he said, hating everything. 

Zuko copied him, and they stepped back into the hallway to walk the loop again. “What do you mean?” 

They marched side-by-side. Sokka kept his spine straight as they made their rounds like he’d forgotten how to walk without looking like an imposter. 

“I found someone else,” he stated, forcibly nonchalant. _Forcibly_ being the key word— he was definitely having heart palpitations. “Another prisoner.”

“Really?” Zuko asked, with more interest than Sokka had expected. “Who?”

“Bato,” he said, and this time, the lie slid off his tongue like oil. “He’s a warrior for the Southern Water Tribe, basically co-Chief with my dad. I think they imprisoned all the leaders here.”

Zuko hummed as they turned back into the stairwell and made their way down to the second floor. “Do you know where he is?”

“The lower cells,” Sokka said, tossing in waves of nausea as they continued to the commons. “I need to let him know I’m here and that we’re escaping soon.” 

He swallowed down bile and clutched at Zuko’s elbow when they stopped at the door to the yard. Zuko turned to him in full attention, solemn but earnest. His heart flopped around like a fish on a spear.

“Could you, uh,” he stumbled, “meet me there at the next patrol swap? To guard the door?”

Zuko nodded and smiled, just the tiniest tilt of his lip. “Of course.”

Sokka tried to smile back against the pull of the muscles in his cheeks. “Thanks, buddy. It means more to me than you know,” he swore and released Zuko’s arm, forced his feet to walk away from him, and entered the sun-soaked yard. 

* * *

When they met again at the stairwell by the commons fifteen degrees of sunlight later, Zuko was quiet. They both stood, frozen at the top of the stairs, thawing in the humidity that rose from beneath the prison. Zuko’s arm was warm against his, his skin pressing harder against him when he took a deep breath. But too soon, Zuko strode forward, down a step, Sokka’s arm cooling strangely in the air from the loss of touch, and the ringing started— just a small shrill ting, originating in the center of his skull. 

He became Zuko’s shadow, two steps behind. Sokka memorized him, painted the picture in his mind, ink on vellum. Resting on his broad shoulders, a curl of black hair caught at the base of Zuko’s helmet, and Sokka couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face. 

Beneath the helmet, beneath the armor, he knew him. 

Their footsteps pealed against the metal stairs. The clanging made the ringing worse, and Sokka’s head began to pound.

It was all so insane. _Tui and La,_ had he really only known him, _really_ known him, for a week?

_My prince_ , his brain supplied, somewhere behind the piercing screech that wasn’t letting up. _My prince of the hearth._ Five syllables. Sokka’s head spun as they reached the final stretch of stairs. Zuko slowed, and Sokka caught up to him, shoulders bumping as they descended. _I’d follow you anywhere_. Seven.

Last night, even as fury built beneath Zuko’s skin, Yue shone around his head, full. Insistent. Irresistible. _Blessed by my full moon._

Five.

As they stepped into the hallway, the air thickened with a foul combination of smoke and steam. Zuko became a ghost, turning immaterial every other second as the steam clouded and cleared in shifts. Sokka kept his eyes on him anyway. Painted in the blanks. Poured ink across the page as the ringing increased to a fever-pitch.

“Where’s the cell?” Zuko asked, muffled. Sokka’s ears had to be bleeding, the pitch so high it could shatter glass.

The pitch so high it acted as a medicine, numbing every other kind of pain. He was almost thankful as he opened his mouth to respond.

“It’s down here,” he must have said. “Just around the corner.”

And as they breached the corner, it was all there, just as they’d planned. Mai, in her traditional blood-red robes, unnaturally motionless. And a guard, immediately to her right, ready and waiting.

His lungs were as heavy as stones, pulling him deeper and deeper, the cerulean fading to navy, nearly to black. Zuko stilled beside him as Mai raised an arm.

“Guard, that’s him!” she shouted, pointing a thin finger in their direction. “The intruder!”

The guard leapt forward into a sprint, graceful, floating through the steam. Sokka wanted to look away, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t even blink as they ran directly at them, as if they could run right through if they just kept going.

At the very last moment, a sword’s length from them both, the guard threw an arm out towards them, past Zuko, jabbing pointed fingers into Sokka’s neck. 

Tingles cobwebbed down his chest, and he gasped as the wind knocked out of him. A jab to his sternum, both his biceps, his hip. A jab to the meat of his thighs as he collapsed, paralysis settling into his muscles and numbness into his heart. 

His body tried to shiver as cold metal pressed under his arms, lifting his limp form up off the poisoned soil. With the last of his strength, he searched for Zuko, and found him, helmetless, holding open the cell door. Chin raised, lips closed, eyes vacant. 

The ringing in his ears vanished, left him in the emptiest silence he’d ever heard. He felt nothing. As he was dragged into the metal chair, all he could think of was what Katara had said after Zuko betrayed them in the caves of Ba Sing Se:

That, right from the start, Zuko had always been a rotten, irredeemable bastard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DON'T HATE ME, I PROMISE I WILL FIX THIS!!!
> 
> Part Two begins next time- with Zuko's POV to fill in the blanks. SO excited for what's to come!!!
> 
> It may be slightly longer than my ~10 days til update, since I want to make sure I solidify Zuko's emotional arc for the rest of the fic before I begin. I have it all written out, just wanna polish the details for my own sake :)
> 
> I can't tell you all how much I've enjoyed writing this fic so far & getting to interact with you all! Thank you again for reading and come visit me on tumblr (I'm paintedlight there, too).
> 
> <3


	11. PART TWO: The Banishment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter 1 of Part 2!!! 
> 
> Welcome to Zuko's POV, featuring childhood flashbacks, yes sad ones but also? cute Zuko & Mai interaction <3
> 
> *rewinds VCR*

PART TWO

_8 Years Ago_

“Is this your son, Ozai?” Zuko tensed as Grandfather’s deep voice boomed through the throne room, harsh from decades of spilling smoke from his lungs. Pitch-black clouds hung over them like a thunderstorm. “It is said that Agni does not shine upon a bastard child.”

Zuko’s knees throbbed from the fall, his fist cooling against the dark tiles. He squeezed his eyes shut and searched for his inner flame, weak and hiding along his ribcage. Tears burned his eyes as he willed it to resurface, but he found nothing left to burn, his chi reduced to powdery carbon.

_I failed._

“You’ll never catch up,” Azula snickered to his left, at the very edge of his peripheral vision. Her long ponytail bounced as she laughed, and even from there Zuko could tell it had finally grown longer than his. A sign of honor, of power. Of Agni’s blessing.

“This is a waste of my time,” Grandfather said, the flames around his throne blazing to the ceiling in streaks of light. “Ozai, just tell me what you want. Everyone else, go!”

Zuko heaved gulps of air as two pairs of footsteps clattered against the stone and stopped by his side. 

“Stand up, prince,” his guard, Okju, commanded, her voice clipped and unmerciful.

Acid rose in his throat. He stared down at the tiles. “I failed.”

A hand warmed the center of his back. “No,” Mom whispered, and his inner flame licked around in his chest, slowly realigning with his heartbeat. “I loved watching you.” 

She gathered him up on shaky knees and guided him out of the throne room. Zuko kept his gaze lowered, out of respect and shame, as Okju shut the tall doors behind them. He shivered as Grandfather’s shouts bled through still, deadly as lightning. As they walked the red halls, Mom bent down to whisper in his ear, somehow louder than every other voice. 

“That’s who you are, Zuko,” she swore, her hand in his. “Someone who keeps fighting even though it’s hard.”

* * *

_Azula always lies._

Zuko, lying back on his silky sheets, stared at the warm ring of light thrown on the ceiling from the lamp on his bedside table. He flinched every time it flickered— it only flickered that abruptly when the oil was low.

_Azula always lies._

“Dad’s going to kill you!” she had sung. Zuko shot up in bed, his tightly closed fists tingling as she leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and smirked. “No really. He is.”

Heat gathered at his knuckles as he leapt to the floor. “Ha-ha Azula. Nice try.”

“Fine, don’t believe me.” Her grin widened. She crossed her arms and skipped towards him. “But I heard _everything._ ”

Zuko squinted. She was so confident, she _had_ to be lying. 

She always lied.

“Grandfather said Dad's punishment should fit his crime,” she shrugged. “ _You must know the pain of losing a first-born son,_ ” she bellowed, her voice lowered in a dramatic impersonation, _“by sacrificing your own!_ ”

When Azula’s bangs had grown out, she started parting them down the middle, two pieces framing her face with the rest in a bun. With the voice, the hair, the golden clasp securing it— Zuko’s stomach dropped. His Grandfather’s face hid beneath hers. Azula was a mask.

_Azula always lies._

“Liar!” he had shouted, already hoarse.

He wasn’t sure when he had begun to back away, the meat of his calves bumping up against the bed frame.

“I'm only telling you for your own good,” she continued, tapping her chin in phony contemplation. Zuko glared at her amateur theatrics when she gasped. “I know! Maybe you could find a nice Earth Kingdom family to adopt you!”

“Stop it!” Zuko edged towards panic as his inner flame retreated again, deep inside of him where he couldn’t seem to reach. “You're lying! Dad would never do that to me!”

Azula spun around when Mom cleared her throat. She stood by Okju in the doorway, one hand closed around the handle of an unlit lantern, the other reaching for Azula’s arm.

“That’s enough. Azula,” she scolded, yanking her into the hallway. “It’s time for a talk.”

As the door slammed shut, Zuko scrambled into the bed, heart racing. Okju had ignored the entire ordeal, performing her nightly routine of checking and double-checking each door and window for safety. 

He held his pillow close to his chest as she scanned the lock on the first window, then closed it. Each color in the room grew a shade darker. Zuko stared at the oil in the base of the lantern, how it blurred the glass, built up the crevices. Okju shut another window. The red walls turned maroon. Shadows charred the furniture. He matched his breath with the flame, gasping as it flickered. When the final window blocked the moonlight, the lantern cast a bronze glow over the room. 

_Azula always—_

Everything plunged suddenly into darkness. 

Zuko strained to find Okju through the dark. He sensed movement by his wardrobe, a figure hovering by the eastern door. 

“Miss,” he called, his hands hardly able to pull the sheet back for how hard they were shaking, “can I please have a light?”

When his feet hit the cold floor, Zuko almost collapsed. He held his hands out in front of him, reaching for anything. All he found was air.

His lungs ached like someone was sitting on his chest. “Miss, can I please have a light?” 

“We have been ordered to save oil,” a voice said, just ahead of him. Zuko squeezed his eyes shut, pressed into them with the base of his palms. When he opened them again, Okju had squatted in front of him, her sharp features slicing through the gray. Even in the dark, he could see her snarl. “Are you such a failure of a firebender that you can’t make your own light?”

Zuko couldn’t breathe. He clenched his fists, waiting for sparks to form against his knuckles. They never came. 

Okju smiled like she knew. Zuko’s nails dug into the palm of his hand.

“Let me tell you something. In there,” she taunted, pointing to a panel in the ornately painted wall behind his wardrobe, “there is a dragon as tall as a building. It can’t stand the sound of little boys screaming and whimpering like babies.” Okju grabbed his forearm, and Zuko’s chest constricted. “If it hears you, it’ll burst in through that door after you.”

He swallowed. “And then?”

“And then he’ll burn you to ash. So you can’t make a sound.”

The door creaked open, Mom’s silhouette appearing in the doorway. Okju released her grip and stood.

“Okju!” she chided. “Scaring a child like that.”

“Mom?” Zuko cried and ran to her, latched himself around her, and buried his hands into her robe. She smelled like home, like fire lilies and incense. Her hand settled heavy against his head, and for the first time that night, he took a deep breath. 

She ruffled his hair and bent down, holding her lantern out in between them. The oil sloshed around in the base, full.

“Want to light it?” she whispered, a glint in her eye.

Warmth filled him as she grinned, and Zuko focused on channeling that warmth through his shoulder, down his arm, into his hand. Fixing his gaze on the wick, he pointed his forefinger towards it and pushed the heat outwards. A tiny flame left his fingertip and caught. Mom’s face lit up, the shadows retreating in her presence.

She handed Zuko the lamp and leaned forward to kiss his forehead.

“Sleep well, my son.”

* * *

“Mom?” Zuko rasped, waking to an empty room. Strips of light painted the walls, as if it was already morning, as if she hadn’t _just_ been here— 

_Zuko, please, my love_ , she had said, hands around his cheeks, in the most vivid dream, _listen to me._

Zuko pulled open the door. It creaked, loudly, just as it had when—

_Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you._

“Mom?” His voice echoed in the empty hallway. The old velvety carpet scratched at his bare feet as he started to run. “Mom?”

_No matter how things may seem to change—_

As he turned the corner into the courtyard, he found Azula, basking in the sunlight, tossing his knife in the air.

_—never forget who you are._

“Where’s Mom?” he shouted. The knife reflected blinding rays of sunlight as it twirled back down.

Azula caught the hilt. “No one knows,” she said, effortlessly spinning the knife between each of her fingers. “Oh, and last night, Grandpa passed away.”

“Not funny, Azula!” Zuko stormed towards her, bile and fire rising together in his throat.

She huffed and tossed the knife again. 

"You’re sick,” he spat. “And I want my knife back, _now_.”

He lunged towards her as she caught it, but she was too fast. She switched the knife between her hands as he kept grabbing towards the blade, somehow keeping it just out of his reach. 

“Who’s going to make me?” she laughed, backpedaling as Zuko tried to break her root, trip her up. “Mom?”

The flame in his chest ignited just as Azula misstepped. Zuko snatched the knife from her grasp, not looking back as he sprinted for the gardens.

Agni’s light was the blessing of the Fire Nation, but as his feet hit the grass, the sun hot on his shoulders, everything felt wrong. The fire lilies drooped down in hiding. No turtleducks waddled across the lawn. Zuko squinted through the gardens, a headache sitting dull between his eyes when he saw him.

Father stood, motionless as a statue, staring down into the pond.

“Where is she?” he begged, his voice broken.

Father never turned around. Zuko didn’t see his face again until the coronation that evening, the blood-red sunset pouring over his cheekbones, Zuko at his left hand, Azula on his right.

* * *

_3 Years Later_

When he made it to the end of the twentieth scroll, the characters started to blur together. Yawning, Zuko rolled it back up, stretched his arms over his head, and relished the ache in his shoulders from his dual dao practice at dawn. He’d been a little out of shape— the laceration Piandao had sliced under his collarbone in his final test had taken two lunar cycles to completely heal. He’d probably have a scar.

But for the title of Master Swordsman, it had been worth it.

Zuko stood and retrieved his brush and a blank scroll from the side table, securing the parchment flat against the desk. He dipped the brush in the well and carefully tapped it against the inkstone. 

_Dear Uncle,_ he wrote, tongue between his teeth.

After his cousin Lu Ten had died in the war a year ago, Uncle Iroh had all but disappeared, traveling the world to process his grief. Although he never said where he was, his messenger hawk had always found its way back to Zuko’s window, and Zuko always had a scroll ready to send off. 

_I have almost finished my reading of all Fire Nation legislation since Sozin’s—_ he submerged the brush into the well again— _rule. All that remains is Father’s laws since the last solstice. Thank you again for connecting me with—_ another dip— _Master Piandao. This morning I—_

Zuko froze at a familiar creak in the floorboards, lifting his brush slowly so that no ink dripped onto the page. He finished the character and looked up. Mai stood against the door frame, running a hand nervously through the ends of her hair.

“Azula wants you to come out to the gardens with us.”

“Azula can wait. I’m busy.”

Mai’s hand stilled, untangling her fingers to cross her arms. “Ty Lee wants you to come too,” she said, her cheeks as red as the walls.

“I said I’m _busy_ ,” Zuko snapped, gripping the side of his chair and staring out the window to avoid her gaze. After a few silent moments, she sighed and walked over, sat on the sill with her knees up to her chest.

“I’ll be a good wife, Zuko,” she said, pulling a knife and stone from her sleeve. “I don’t see why you’re being so dramatic about it.”

“I’m _not_ being dramatic about it!”

“You’re not?” A shrill scrape rang out, every two seconds, as she sharpened the blade. “Then why have you been avoiding me ever since we met with the Fire Lord?”

“I’m—” 

“If you say _busy_ , I will kill you,” she growled, gripping the knife in her fist.

He liked Mai, he really did. They had been friends longer than he could remember. But that didn’t mean he wanted to _marry_ her, to “create a powerful bloodline”, as Father had commanded them, as her father had agreed, all of them kneeling silently before the flames of the throne. 

But it was Agni’s will. Zuko’s destiny. His inner flame banged against his sternum like a caged animal until it weakened and collapsed.

“You wouldn’t kill the Prince,” he muttered. 

Mai snorted. “You’re right, I wouldn’t.” She pocketed the stone as she glided up beside him. “What are you working on?”

He squinted up at her. “You really want to know?”

“I asked,” she deadpanned, rolling her eyes. 

He motioned at the scrolls scattered across his workspace, “I just finished reading the laws passed before the solstice, and now I’m writing a letter to Uncle.”

Mai hummed and leaned a hip against the desk. “You won’t be Fire Lord for a while, you know.”

“But I’m the _Prince_ ,” he insisted, “and I need to know everything I can. I should be training alongside the best soldiers, attending Father’s war meetings! I can’t do that if I, if I don’t—”

“I could help you study.”

Zuko stuttered as Mai’s hand laid warm on his shoulder. “R-Really?”

“Yes, Zuko,” she said, fondly, even as her eyes narrowed. Before he could stop her, she snatched a scroll from his desk and cleared her throat. “In what year and for what reason did Fire Lord Ozai install permanent military stations in the Eastern Earth Kingdom colonies?”

“96 AG, and because—” he paused and glanced over the sun-soaked Caldera on the other side of the window. “Wait, what about Azula and Ty Lee? In the gardens?”

“They can wait,” she shrugged, hiding a smile. “We’re busy.”

* * *

Zuko took a deep breath, centering himself. He planted his feet against the warm stone and tried to cycle his chi through his body, up and down, up and down. It was hard to do with the roar of the crowd on either side of him, but he focused just ahead, studying the giant banner hanging on the wall to ground himself.

It was black with gold trim, the Fire Nation emblem of a triple-crested flame stitched red in the center. Old, weighty. The crowd was deafening, but a gong rang out over the noise. He rolled his shoulders back. 

That was his cue.

In the final seconds before the Agni Kai, Zuko prayed for Agni’s blessing. And he knew he _should_ be in Agni’s favor, since the general at the war meeting was wrong. His was a worthy cause— to save the lives of his nation’s soldiers, for his honor and theirs. 

He released the tippet from his shoulders and it floated to the ground, the sun heating his skin as he turned towards the center of the arena.

But his vision tunneled as soon as he saw him. Red robes dropped heavily to the ground.

His father.

The screaming crowd muffled. _Where is the general?_ His chi fluttered around through his limbs as if it couldn’t decide if he was ready to fight or hide. _Why is—_

When his father stepped towards him, fists clenched, Zuko’s knees buckled.

“Please, Father,” he begged, prostrate against the tiles. His lungs burned with effort. “I only had the Fire Nation's best interest at heart.” Shaking, he bowed his head lower. “I’m sorry I spoke out of turn!”

“You will fight for your honor,” he growled.

“I meant you no disrespect,” Zuko swore, his voice cracking. “I am your loyal son.”

Smoke poured from his father’s mouth. “Rise and _fight_ , Prince Zuko!”

He tried to swallow, his tongue sticking dry to the roof of his mouth. To fight his father— it was dishonorable. It was wrong. 

He pressed his forehead to the floor. “I _won’t_ fight you.”

Footsteps pounded against the stone until they stopped in front of him. Zuko trembled, waiting for something to happen. For a moment, everything was still, the crowd quieting down to a low murmur, when suddenly he was yanked up by the hair, gasping, neck tilted back at a harsh angle. 

“Then you will learn respect,” Ozai bellowed, his giant form blocking the sun as he thrust his palm towards his face, “and suffering will be your teacher.”

* * *

Zuko awoke to darkness. Pain shot through his head like the points of one hundred daggers. His heart pounded in his ringing ears, and he willed his hand to lift, to reach towards his face, but nothing happened. His arms trembled against some sort of sheet. He tried to sit up, to see what was wrong, but he never moved. His eyes never opened. The dark was everywhere. His eyes wouldn’t open. His inner flame was only a spark, and his eyes—

“Nephew,” Uncle Iroh said, his voice unsteady. A hand wrapped around his, warm, leathery. “I’m here.”

Zuko tried to speak, but only air passed his lips. He cleared his throat against the sting and started over. 

“Uncle,” he rasped, a dry burn at the back of his throat. 

Suddenly— the Fire Nation crest, red yarn. Massive, lined in gold. The coals alight in bowls on the ground. The tippet floating to the stone floor. Zuko’s heart sped as fast as a jackalope.

“Uncle,” he cried, desperate, “can I have a light?”

Iroh’s grip on his hand tightened slightly as he sighed. “Prince Zuko—”

“Please, Uncle, can I please have a light?” he begged, gasping for breath as Ozai’s silhouette flashed before him. “Give me a light! I can’t—”

Zuko’s palm went cold as hands pushed his shoulders into the sheets, to still his thrashing. He hadn’t noticed he was thrashing. He thought he heard Uncle, soft, instructing him to breathe, just breathe, underneath the sound of his own babbling and heaving, as if he was another person, listening in from another room. 

“Your right eye is swollen shut,” Uncle said, his voice cutting through the clouds as he rubbed Zuko’s arms, “and we will have wait and see how your left eye is doing after you take some time to heal. You need _rest_ , nephew.”

His hands left Zuko’s shoulders to lay overtop his tightened fist. Despite the darkness all around him, he was dragged into sleep, spiraling from panic into exhaustion while his father’s hand reached towards him, over and over.

* * *

A few days later, the swelling went down, just enough to peek through his unburnt eye. With it, Zuko read the scroll sent to his room by Fire Lord Ozai, banishing him from the palace with a mission.

Against Uncle’s wishes (and that of the healers), he left immediately, marching through the halls on shaky legs. He spoke to no one. He said no goodbyes. He gathered his armor, commandeered a ship, and gathered a crew to join him on his quest. 

To regain his honor. 

To find the Avatar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHH ZUKO POV HERE WE GO
> 
> Next chapter we will be back in the present, yet backing up a bit to fill in some blanks :)
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed! Come visit me on tumblr, I'm paintedlight there too!
> 
> P.S.- I got a few grad school interviews!! very excited, but mostly nervous. so we will see if I write this next chapter faster or slower due to my nerves lol


	12. Setting Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah it turns out stress sometimes makes me write more, and also, writing sprints WORK. I know. I was as shocked as you are
> 
> anyway!! this chapter is a long one- welcome to our boi Zuko's emo mind
> 
> also if you hadn't noticed yet, I added chapter titles & will be doing so for the remainder of this fic! this chapter was almost called "Setting Sun, You Know You Oughta Run", a lyric from A Fine Frenzy's "They Can't If You Don't Let Them", but the word "oughta" bothered me too much lol. it's a good song though!

Zuko’s head pounded as he snuck through the dining hall in the east wing of the palace. The jasmine tea, still steaming, sloshed around in his cup as he crouched behind a stack of produce boxes. He winced as the smell floated by him, praying to Agni the guards gossiping across the room wouldn’t detect the flowery scent. 

All he had to do was slide through the panel hidden in the opposite wall without spilling the tea and bowl of komodo chicken and rice stashed beneath his robe. _And_ without being caught. 

But he’d taken greater risks.

When he and Azula were kids, the leader of the royal guard had them memorize the labyrinth of secret passages in and out on the palace, inspired by the ceiling shafts and loose floor tiles of the Fire Temples. Some paths led to rocky outcrops on the side of the caldera, some deep within it— but only the royal family were given the details of the paths. Not the servants, not even the guards.

A throaty laugh echoed through the room. Footsteps followed it, quieting until he was sure all of the guards had shuffled into the hallway. 

All clear.

Zuko held the dishes close to his side as he sprinted to the back wall and wrenched back the tall golden panel with his free hand. The moment he shut himself in, he decompressed, sighing as his palm ignited. He blinked until his eyes adjusted to the light. Beneath his feet, stairs spiraled down into darkness. 

In the three weeks since his return as Prince— since his honor was restored, since he sided with Azula in Ba Sing Se— he had become familiar with the steps down into the caldera, beneath the palace. To the cells meant to hold the Fire Nation’s most wanted criminals. To his uncle.

He tried to stay away, but for some reason, he couldn’t. He could barely admit it to himself, but it helped. Maybe it was the low light, the occasional torch burning against the sulfuric walls rather than the red walls, red carpet, red _everything_ , but the pain ricocheting around behind his eyes always dulled as he descended. 

It was infuriating. 

Every morning, a thorny bush grew in the center of his skull. It needled into him as he meditated, as he practiced his firebending, as he ate lunch with Mai, Ty Lee, and Azula. Half the time, he would have dinner sent to his quarters and eat alone in the dark.

But it never abated until he left the palace grounds. Even his body knew he didn’t belong there.

He glared beneath his hood at the two guards at Iroh’s cell door until they stepped aside. The first time he had barged into the prison, he’d threatened them within an inch of their lives to keep his visit a secret. Now, they knew better.

The door slammed behind him. Iroh sat crosslegged in the center of the cell, head down, statuesque in a circle of moonlight. Fire crawled up his throat. He swallowed it down and pushed the cup and bowl from his robe. 

“Uncle, it’s me,” he said, kneeling to set the offering carefully by the edge of the cell bars. “I brought more komodo chicken.” 

Iroh didn’t move. He didn’t even _look_ at him. 

“And a cup of jasmine tea.”

The old man didn’t flinch. Zuko’s fists closed reflexively as he straightened, the silence grating at his bones, iron against iron.

“You’re not going to say anything?” he shouted, the sound absorbed by the soil-packed walls. He grimaced as the effort reignited the shards of pain in his skull. Squeezing his eyes shut, he collapsed against the dirt floor and groaned, head in his hands. “I don’t know why I keep coming back here!” 

“Have you been meditating, Prince Zuko?” 

Zuko’s head shot up so fast he dizzied. Iroh stared right at him, stared through him, a gentle smirk on his lips, coarse eyebrows buried up in the lines on his forehead. The way he always did before reciting a useless platitude. 

It made him sick. 

“That’s what you want to talk about?” Zuko scoffed. “My meditation practice?”

“You wanted me to say something,” Iroh shrugged, like he hadn’t kept a vow of silence for weeks. Like he hadn’t spent every visit close-lipped and unmoving while Zuko ranted and raged around the cell. “Yet when I _do_ speak, you do not answer me?”

Iroh was smiling, now. 

“Fine," Zuko spat. He crossed his arms and stared unseeing at the wall to Iroh’s left. He couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. “Yes, Uncle. I meditate every morning.”

“Have you been practicing your katas?”

“Yes,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I have.”

“Hm. I see.”

“‘I see’? See what?” Sparks flickered within his fists, sizzling against the skin of his palms. “Why are you even asking me this?”

Iroh eyed the food and the cup of tea as if he hadn’t noticed it before. He leaned forward and guided them carefully into the cell through the metal bars.

“I would think that if you were keeping up with your spiritual practice, then you would know why you continue to visit a crazy old man in prison,” Iroh nodded, cradling the cup of tea. In a breath, steam began to rise again above the cup. “Your spirit is restless, my nephew. You are unsure of your path.”

“I know my path,” Zuko protested, and the flames cycling through him pressured him to his feet. “I am the Prince of the Fire Nation! And I—”

“You are,” he interrupted, calmly, which only made Zuko angrier. “ _And_ you have been traveling for a long time.” Iroh sipped at his tea, trying and failing to hide a grimace. He cleared his throat and glanced back up at Zuko as he set the cup back onto the dirt. “If you need to spend time away from the palace, there is no dishonor in that.” 

Zuko blinked. “I don’t understand. I’m finally welcomed back, and you think I should leave?” 

Iroh tapped his chin. “I am sure Master Piandao would welcome you in for a time,” he said, picking up the bowl. “You can get out of the palace, consider your path, and finish your training.”

“Maybe you _are_ a crazy old man,” Zuko sneered as Iroh stuck his grimy fingers into the rice. “I finished my training five years ago.”

He only chuckled. “There is only so much he could have taught you back then. Other things you must learn in time.” He tossed a chunk of komodo chicken onto his tongue, and continued, mouth full. “There is still much you do not know, Prince Zuko,” he said, chewed some more. Unbelievable. “Piandao is a master swordsman, yes, but above all,” his throat bobbed as he swallowed, “he is a man of philosophy, and he brews an impressive pot of lapsang souchong!”

“Anything I don’t know, I can figure out on my own,” he growled, sparks on his tongue. “Like I always have.”

Iroh hummed. “It is true that you carry a heavy burden. But you need to be sure of who you truly are, and allow your true self to be seen by another, before you can bear its full weight.” 

Zuko groaned and threw his arms above his head. “I’ve had enough of your riddles!” 

Ignoring his outburst, Iroh shrugged again and shoveled rice into his mouth. Zuko fumed, wanting nothing more than to reach through the bars, grab his shoulders, and shake the knowing look off of his maddeningly kind face. 

“If you wanted me to find my path so badly,” he bellowed, “why won’t you tell me what it is?”

“You told me you knew your path.”

“I _do_!”

“Ah.” Iroh picked up the teacup again and held it beneath his nose. “And how are your headaches, Prince Zuko?”

The door hinge screeched as Zuko stormed back into the hall, sulfur weighing down his lungs like a millstone, his head throbbing harder with every step.

* * *

The grass waved in the breeze as he and Mai climbed the hill at the edge of the island, armed with blankets and a basket of fruit, tea leaves, and a variety of buns. Zuko had spent the whole morning planning —  by the time they were settled, it should be sunset.

Wood splintered into his palms as his fists closed tighter around the handle of the basket. He couldn’t mess this up.  Not after last night.

“Is here okay?” Mai asked, motioning to a grassy spot right ahead of them, just close enough to the cliff edge to watch the waves brush against the shore by the docks.

Zuko nodded and lowered the basket gently to the ground. The sea roared beneath them. He breathed in the salty air, the crashing tide soothing the tension from his shoulders. When Mai cleared her throat, he found her lounged across the gold-speckled blanket, patting the spot beside her. 

“Oh, here,” Zuko said as he kneeled and gingerly retrieved a pastry from their assortment. “It’s a dragon-berry fruit tart with rose petals on top. I know it’s your favorite.”

Mai’s eyes creased as she smiled, her dark hair outlined in the bright pinks and ambers of the sunset. “Thanks, Zuko.”

He took out the tart he had packed for himself, hyperaware of Mai’s shoulder pressed up against his. Warmth bled through his sleeve. Zuko’s stomach dropped, last night flashing before him as loud and blinding as fireworks. Was Mai warm because she had leaned against him? Or did he absorb her warmth? Had he gone cold? Did the sun darken inside him, as a corpse returns its soul to Agni? Where was his soul? Was he even—

“Zuko?”

The pastry crumbled, dry and sweet on his tongue. “Yeah?”

Mai reached forward until her thumb was an inch from his lips, a silent question. His heartbeat pounded in his ears as he nodded and she wiped the crumbs from the side of his mouth. 

She stared down at the edge of her robe as she rubbed her thumb clean against the fabric. “Are we okay?”

“We’re fine.” Zuko pulled out a couple of moon peaches. He was pretty sure Mai loved moon peaches. “Uh, why wouldn’t we be?”

Mai shut the basket closed before he could grab the sea salt buns. 

“Don’t act stupid,” she said, no heat in her words, though Zuko wished there had been. 

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about last night.”

He threw the basket back open, the teacups clinking together as he pulled them out and set them haphazardly onto the blanket. Some water escaped the bronze teapot and spilled, lukewarm, down his hands. “Couldn’t we just forget it and enjoy the sunset?”

“You were freezing, Zuko,” Mai said, her eyebrows scrunched together beneath her bangs. “Cold to the touch.”

“Well, I’m fine now.” 

Zuko abandoned the tea set and curled his knees to his chest, fixated on the distant blade of the horizon. His stomach churned as he fiddled his thumbs. Over the crashing tides and croaking seagulls, Mai sighed,  the weight of her gaze finally lifting off of him.

“I wasn’t trying to pressure you.” She shook the satchel of jasmine and green tea leaves into the water. “Forgive _me_ for being worried.” 

Mai’s expression was neutral, even for her, and Zuko’s heart twisted in guilt. Since they were children, he could always count on her. More than Ty Lee, more than Azula— more than anyone else in his family. She deserved better than him. 

He scrambled to reset the lid. Mai stayed quiet as Zuko nestled the teapot between his palms and breathed deep into his stomach until steam rose from the air hole. 

The sun descended as the tea brewed, the red sky fading into purples and blues, darkening like a bruise. All the while, Mai watched him. He could feel it. He kept his gaze down, unfocused, his hands on the pot, the temperature constant, until Uncle’s voice invaded his mind to tell him the tea was ready.

He held a finger against the knob and poured her a cup. The earthy scent diffused around them and into the cooling wind.

“I’m sorry, Mai,” Zuko whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He poured his own, chest tightening as the seconds passed. He flinched when Mai cupped his unscarred cheek and lifted his chin. Her thumb brushed his cheekbone. 

“Maybe you haven’t been getting enough sleep,” she suggested, searching his eyes. 

She was always searching. He had no idea what it was she wanted, and if he did, he doubted he would be able to give it to her.

“Yeah,” he huffed, “maybe.”

Mai leaned into him, hesitating as their noses brushed. Zuko closed the distance, and their lips met, slid against each other, familiar but not quite practiced. 

Her lips felt like… like skin. Zuko turned his head, seeking another angle. The wind cooled their mouths as they reconnected, and he shivered as she hummed against him, and his heart beat against his ribcage as her hand wrapped around his shoulder, and he forgot what to do, his—

“A _hem.”_

Zuko jerked back.  Mai glared as Azula sauntered up behind them, bending down to steal a moon peach from the blanket.

“Zuko, could I have a word with you?” she asked, if it could be called ‘asking’, her tone artificial and harsh.

He balled his hands into fists. “Can’t you see we’re busy?” 

She smirked and bit into the fruit. Juice dripped down her chin and into the grass. 

“Oh, Mai,” she started as she wiped her face clean with the back of her hand, “Ty Lee needs help untangling her braid.”

Static rose between them like the air before a lightning strike. Against the pressure, Mai stood and casually brushed her hands down her robes. 

“Sounds pretty serious,” she said, almost playfully, drifting by Azula and heading back down the hill. A knife slid between her pointed nails as she walked out of earshot. Zuko clenched his jaw. There was no way she would come back tonight. 

“What is it, Azula?”

She crossed her arms, towering over him on the blanket. “Good news, Zuzu!Father’s _so_ happy you killed the Avatar—” Azula tisked as he rolled his eyes, “—again, you’re welcome—he’s invited you to the war meeting tomorrow.”

Zuko shot up, a strange numbness in his limbs. “A war meeting?” 

She hummed in affirmation. Zuko focused on keeping his feet planted on the ground as the world turned on its axis. 

“It would be your second war meeting, wouldn’t it?” she quipped, pretending to study her nails. “We’re preparing for the attack the Avatar’s little friends have planned for the eclipse next week.”

“Next _week_?” Fire inching toward his fingertips. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Oh calm down. I’m guarding the throne, Father will be in hiding— and thanks to you, the Avatar is dead anyway,” she shrugged. “They’re destined to fail.”

Zuko’s lungs burned. If the Avatar showed up in Caldera during the invasion, his title as Prince, his honor would be stripped away from him yet again. And it would be worse than if he had never returned— instead of banishment, he would be hunted. Killed. 

His strength drained away as the sun set. Zuko shuddered as the horizon disappeared, the sky and sea joining in the dark, but Uncle always said that the night sky could be called upon for guidance. It seemed that the inky blackness, littered with stars and the halved moon, was guiding him away from his home again.

“You’re right,” Zuko rasped, resignation dragging through his veins like liquor. “It’s destiny.”

* * *

The week passed in a timeless haze. Zuko had attended the war meeting, for the first time at his father’s right hand, and all he could recall was the fury running through him, unquenchable as a forest fire. He was an imposter. By midnight he would be, once again, on the run— this time as an outcast from his own people. He would become a fugitive, a desperate soul in hiding, with a lost past and no apparent future. 

He wrote a coded letter to Iroh, with instructions to burn upon reading, and delivered it, sealed in wax, to his cell guard. He would understand. Besides the letter to Mai, which he had yet to write…that would be enough. He couldn’t risk Azula knowing anything. She’d track him down herself.

Hands shaking, he packed a bag with only the necessities and dressed in all black, the guise he wore as the Blue Spirit. All the candles in his room snuffed out with a wave of his wrist. Smoke trails drifted through the air, over his childhood bed, and Zuko’s heart turned over in his chest. 

With a final look, he snuck out the door, wanting nothing more than to burn it all down.

All that was left was Mai.

The halls were empty, the guards reassigned to prepare for the attack. Zuko slithered through the halls and out of the palace, across the stone courtyard, and into Mai’s quarters. He didn’t expect her to be there. She had left with Ty Lee to help Azula perfect her plan for the attack tomorrow. 

Lighting only the candle at her desk, he laid a piece of parchment across the wood, poured fresh ink into the well and dipped a brush into the puddle. Seconds passed. Minutes. Zuko cursed as a black drop fell and bled into the scroll. What could he say? How could—

There was a quick scrape of spark rocks, the distinct sound of a flame catching. Zuko whipped around in his chair. Mai stood rigid in the doorway.

“Zuko?” she whispered. “What are you doing?” 

Zuko’s words caught in his throat like a coward. She stormed towards him, cheeks reddening, and stared at the brush in his hand. 

“Were you just going to leave without saying goodbye?” she hissed, snatching the scroll from the desk and throwing it to the floor.

Zuko’s throat tightened. “I’m so sorry, Mai,” he said, reaching for her hand. Mai tore away from him and crossed her arms, glaring through her tears.

“I’m leaving tonight." He set his hands awkwardly in his lap. “I don’t have a choice, I—”

“For someone so worried about their honor,” she spat, “you seem unconcerned about running away right before an attack on your own nation.”

“My honor is _gone_ unless I capture the Avatar before the eclipse!” he exclaimed, begging her to understand. She _had_ to understand. “If I don’t, it’s never coming back.”

Mai shifted on her feet, her lips pursed in a tight line. “If you don’t, they’ll have you killed.”

“Let them try and find me!” He lept from the chair to pace around the room. “And you’re right. They’ll kill me. So I’m _not_ dragging you into it.”

“So you’re just going to leave?”

Zuko stopped in his tracks and faced her. Even from the other side of the room, he could see her shaking in the low light. The blaze burning low in his stomach died out.

“Yes. I am.”

Mai turned away. “Fine,” she whispered, cold as steel. “You can go. But you and I both know you won’t be able to kill the Avatar before tomorrow.” She looked at him then, dead in the eyes. “Neither will your assassin.”

“My—” Zuko dizzied. “You knew about that?”

“I had him tracked.”

“You—”

“We’re already aware of the attack, Zuko,” she said, fatigue lacing her tone as she crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed. “The Avatar’s invasion _will_ fail. You have a higher chance of redeeming yourself if you wait.”

“But Mai—”

“Listen to me!” she demanded, and Zuko shut his mouth. “If they survive the attack, you can follow them. Once they land somewhere, and they’ll have to, we can just…meet them.”

“Meet them?” Zuko perched beside her on the bed. “And then what?”

“I don’t know yet. If I don’t figure something out, go into hiding.” Mai sighed and, without looking over at him, grabbed his hand and squeezed tight. “But don’t go before I try.”

* * *

The Avatar led the invasion. Azula successfully thwarted the attack, and many were left behind and imprisoned while the Avatar’s bison left with the youngest of the invaders. They followed close behind— Mai in a small airship, Zuko in a war balloon— using the clouds as cover. When the bison landed on a dusty plateau by the Western Air Temple, they docked in the forest nearby and ate dinner. 

Well, Mai ate dinner. Zuko was restless, trudging back and forth through the grass as she picked at her rice and eel. 

“You want me to just, walk up to them?” he recited, hands thrown up in the air. “Walk up and apologize?”

“Yes.”

“And then what? _Befriend_ the Avatar?”

Mai took a bite, swallowed. “Yes.”

“You _can’t_ be serious,” he groaned, grasping at his hair as he threw his head back. “I can’t just befriend the Avatar! There’s no way he doesn’t hate me!” He took a deep breath, heat bleeding through his knuckles. “If he doesn’t kill me on the spot, his friends—”

“Would you calm down?” she glared. “I haven’t finished.”

Zuko planted himself cross-legged beside her on the dirt, grumbling as he tore up a handful of grass and sprinkled them back to the earth.

“We passed the Boiling Rock on the way here. My uncle’s the warden, remember?” She pointed her chopsticks at him. “If you lure one of the Avatar’s friends to the prison, we can trap them and leave together. The Avatar will spend all his energy trying to find them—”

“—instead of planning another attack.” He shook his head. Maybe Mai was onto something.

“And,” she added, placing a bowl of steaming food onto his lap. “it’ll buy you time to finish the job you started. You can restore your honor _and_ prevent more bloodshed by delaying another invasion.”

Zuko nodded, then forced himself to eat a bite of rice. It was salty, but otherwise tasteless. He poked at the slices of eel with his chopsticks.

“But how will I lure one of them… to a prison?”

“We bait them,” she said simply, plucking a sai from her boot. “A lot of people were captured— surely one of them is someone they care about.”

Mai patted around in the grass. She paused and picked up a rock, inspecting it before sliding the blade across, the scrape severe against the steady hum of cricket-flies and badgerfrog croaks. Zuko grimaced as a dull pain bloomed right behind his eyes. Golden hour had passed, but even as evening fell, he had to close his eyes against the light until the answer came to him. 

“Katara’s father,” he winced, the pain sharpening as he spoke, “I think he is a warrior for the Southern Water Tribe. He’s probably imprisoned in Caldera.” 

Zuko gritted his teeth. He had a habit of recklessness, but baiting Katara with her father soon after betraying her at Ba Sing Se had to be a suicide mission. Agni, she may kill him before he could even do that, take him out for befriending her pet Avatar. 

Then, there was Sokka.

“Her brother…” Zuko hesitated. “He isn’t a bender.” 

Mai squinted and sheathed the knife. “That could work.”

Even though Sokka had confronted him when he landed in his village searching for the Avatar, Zuko hadn’t paid much attention to the man— not until he’d woken up in his arms, on the Avatar’s bison, half-frozen after the siege of the Northern Water Tribe. As life reentered him through the heat of Sokka’s chest, Zuko tried to focus his disoriented mind on gathering intel. He laid perfectly still, his head lulled against Sokka’s shoulder, listening to him comfort the princess and mumble to himself over some sort of map, while Katara and Aang quietly discussed the spirit world. 

As their paths intersected over the following months, Zuko learned that Sokka was a tactician, headstrong— a warrior himself. And he knew better than to underestimate non-benders.

Pulling his knees up to his chest, he stared into the bowl, rice drying to the sides in clumps.

“Even if they let me into their group, I still don’t expect him to trust me enough to break into a prison with me.” Sokka’s crooked grin filled his mind, and Zuko clenched his jaw as his inner fire lurched against his ribcage. “He’s brave. Stubborn.”

Mai hummed and pried the bowl from Zuko’s grasp. “You’d be surprised what people will do when they’re desperate.”

“But I’ve been chasing them for the past year!” He buried his hands in his hair. The longer he thought about it, the worse the plan seemed. “There’s _no_ way—”

“Maybe there isn’t.”

“Yeah,” he huffed, hugging his knees. "Maybe there isn’t.”

Mai wrapped a hand around his forearm and shook him gently. “No, maybe I can convince him to go with you.” 

He unfolded himself to look at her, eyebrows raised, her smirk at the angle that meant she was serious, that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Zuko frowned. “I don’t want you to be involved.”

Mai rolled her eyes and stood, tossing the bowls into her sack. “What if I corner him, let him know I have his father,” she suggested, then unrolled her blanket and tucked it around his shoulders. “…and that I just want you back?”

He must have been shivering. Mai rubbed his arms through the blanket and sat back down beside him, holding him against her side. 

“So, he’d get me out of their hair _and_ find his father. That,” he laughed, “that just might work.”

“Yeah, it just might.” 

The smallest grin lit up her face. Zuko couldn’t help but smile in return, even as unease sat in his gut, unable to ignore. 

“I still don’t like the idea of you getting this close.”

“I don’t need your protection, Zuko,” she chided before holding his cheeks gently between her palms, angling him to face her. The tip of her nose had turned pink in the cold air. “Everything can go back to normal,” she promised, “ _better_ than normal. You can come back home. We just have to pull this off.”

Zuko held his breath. “Do you really think this will work?” 

“People will do the stupidest things for love,” she said, her cheeks flushing as she pulled away.

Zuko swallowed. _What could Fire Nation royalty know about love?_

The question stalked him like a predator as Mai collected the fabric for his tent. It hurt too much to look at her. Instead, Zuko stared at the dirt, their campfire dying down along with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO NOW YOU KNOW
> 
> a quick funny story- I couldn't decide if Zuko should know he likes Sokka immediately or not until they were kissing.... turns out he kinda caught feels super early <3 whether he knows it consciously yet or not <3


	13. Like Wildfire, It Starts In My Chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: near death experience. I'll add it to the tags as well (also, tw: lots of PTSD. Zuko will be experiencing a lot of trauma responses through the rest of the fic) 
> 
> yes I write Zuko's POV with Sokka's POV pulled up beside my word doc on my laptop... yes I throw in little callbacks..... <3
> 
> enjoy zukka meetcute 2: electric hullabaloo

With all his strength, Zuko clung to the vine. He refused to peer into the bottomless ravine yawning beneath him. Heaving, he stabilized himself with his thighs like the vine was a rope as he regained his breath. 

_It’s all in the breath_ , Uncle always said. _It’s all in the breath._

Just above him, the assassin was still attacking the Avatar and his friends. Every few seconds, an explosion shook through the canyon, followed by the sound of stone shattering against stone, followed by the echoes of stone shattering against stone.

Zuko _had_ to climb back to the landing, and fast. 

Bracing himself, he slowly angled his head back, and his stomach lurched when the vine tore from the earth. He bounced as clumps of dirt rained against his face and into his hair. The muscles in his shoulders burned, tense as he held on tight, the explosions now muffled in his ears.

When he looked back up, his heart plummeted. 

At this new angle, it was impossible. He couldn’t reach and grab the ledge. He couldn’t climb the vine anymore without it tearing completely from the outcrop.

No one was coming— no one knew he was still alive. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t come and save him.

Zuko gasped, his throat closing up as he pressed his cheek against the vine.  
  
He was dying.  


Dying young. Not like he’d expected anything different.  


His biceps shook at the strain. Zuko growled and put more weight into his thighs. He was _dying_ , and with what legacy? 

He was a traitor for running from the invasion, a coward for refusing to fight his father, a failure for letting the Avatar live. 

He was a monster for hurting Toph, a terrible lover to Mai, a terrible nephew to Uncle. And for what?

The joints in Zuko’s fingers weakened and he gritted his teeth to keep tears from rolling down his face. He took a breath, a deep breath, searching for the peace in death he’d always heard about.

He didn’t find it. He didn’t want it.

He wanted the war to be over. He wanted to stop running— he wanted to know who he was. Or _remember_ who he was. 

He didn’t want to die.

“Hey, Zuko!”

The voice hit him like a sunray, and when he saw him, his vision cleared— Sokka, with his hand outstretched towards him, veiny and bronzed. Sokka, his eyes wide and almost indigo underneath the scarlet sunset, determination gilded across his face.

“Come on!” Sokka urged.

Zuko had to be hallucinating. Maybe Sokka had died in the explosion and had come to lead him into the spirit world. 

Sokka wiggled his fingers an inch from his nose. “I’m trying to save you, here!”

Zuko’s thighs burned, his shoulders burned, his joints screamed for him to let go. He shut his eyes, just for a moment, half expecting Sokka to disappear when he opened them.

But he was still there. 

Zuko released a single hand, reaching upwards to wrap snug around Sokka’s palm. Immediately another hand locked around his wrist, and Zuko let go completely, his life in Sokka’s hands as he hung over the canyon. Out of nowhere, the Avatar wrapped thin fingers around his shoulders, everyone grunting as they dug their heels into the dirt, until all three of them collapsed in a heap. 

Zuko drug himself back to his feet, his muscles turned to sludge. As he dusted himself off, he noticed his hand, still wrapped tight around Sokka’s, warm and secure. He jerked from his grasp, trapping the warmth in a fist.

The group surrounded him in a crescent, Toph and Katara flanking the Avatar on either side.  Everyone he’d hunted for the past year, all of whom probably wanted him dead, who’d refused him already.  He stared ahead as Sokka’s gaze pressed against the right side of his face. 

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” the Avatar said as he dusted off his robes, “but thank you, Zuko.”

Confusion jolted through him. 

As Sokka whined, Zuko studied the Avatar— tall and lanky, with loose shoulders and an easy smile. Sincere. But Zuko had done nothing but almost have them killed. _They_ had saved _him._

“Listen,” he pleaded, overcome with the urge to just…tell them the truth. Or, what he could of it, at least. To settle the debts he could settle, here and now.

“I know I didn’t explain myself very well yesterday. All I want is to do my part in ending the war. And Toph,” he said, bringing his palm and fist together in respect as he bowed to the small teenager, her face unreadable. “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

When he rose from the bow, no one had moved an inch. 

“It truly was an accident,” he swore, sweat beading on his palms. Surely they’d believe him— he wasn’t lying this time. “Fire can be so dangerous and wild, so as a firebender, I need to be more careful and control my bending, so I don’t hurt people unintentionally.” 

“I think you _are_ supposed to be my firebending teacher,” the Avatar said. Katara’s eyebrows furled behind him. Zuko shivered under her glare. Stomach churning, he forced his eyes back to the Avatar, his expression kind, solemn. 

“—I never wanted to firebend again,” he was saying. “But now I know you understand how easy it is to hurt the people you love.” 

The Avatar’s voice muffled and the chirps of cricket flies faded to silence.

_Rise and fight, Prince Zuko!_

His vision blurred, the Avatar before him, deep in a Fire Nation bow.

_I am your loyal son!_

Zuko swallowed bile as the Avatar and his friends turned and walked down the slope of the outcrop. The Avatar peered back at him, waving him forward. An invitation.

He followed them numbly down the rocky aisles, down towards the grounds of the Western Air Temple. As they descended, Katara scowled in his direction, mumbling threats under her breath, weaving the water from her pouch in streams around her. 

It was a warning. It terrified him. 

Sokka, however, kept squinting at his cheek. If Zuko didn’t know better, he would think he was checking in on him. He would think he was concerned.

That terrified him even more.

The moment they reached the temple grounds, Zuko muttered some bullshit about collecting his belongings, and sprinted, terrified, for the woods.

* * *

Night blanketed the temple as Zuko returned to the ruins. Laughter echoed across the courtyard, and the warm light of a campfire glowed over the terrace a building over. When his stomach growled at the smell of meat floating through the air, he sighed and kicked at a pile of rubble. 

The Avatar’s invitation would probably only go so far.

Zuko groaned, his back muscles twitching with overuse as he sat against an undamaged side of the stone fountain. A burst of wind tumbled through the courtyard. He crossed his arms, lifting his shoulders to guard his ears against the sting of cold air. 

Like many nights he spent, banished, out at sea, he longed for the perpetual balmy heat of the Fire Nation.

As he shivered, the fire on the terrace weakened and the laughter died down. He thought they had forgotten about him completely until Sokka emerged from the terrace, starting carefully down the stairwell. 

He squinted at the object in Sokka’s hands. As he neared, it was obvious— the man was balancing a bowl of food gingerly between his palms. Zuko gritted against the strange curl in his gut. 

Sokka, though not short in stature, looked taller than he was. He was lean, limber. The muscles in his legs were strung taut like a bowstring. His tunic cut off before it reached his shoulders, revealing firm muscles that tensed further as he approached, staring into the bowl, biting his lip in concentration.

Zuko tore his gaze to the stone tiles around him. Some had splintered, some were absolutely decimated. Irreparable. His nails pinched into his palms as a shadow fell over the stone, over him, over the fountain. When he looked up, Sokka was just standing there, squinting into the distance. 

The flame sitting low in Zuko’s stomach diminished into a pile of embers. Mai had already gotten to him— he was probably plotting against him now. Trying to figure out how to lure him to the Boiling Rock. Trying to gain his trust.

Zuko was supposed to be doing the same.

“Uh…” he started, eager to get this over with already. “Hi?”

Sokka startled out of the trance, wide-eyed, the lump in his neck bobbing as he swallowed. 

Zuko’s breath caught. The beginnings of a headache bloomed behind his eyelids. 

“Hey!” Sokka said, strangely theatrical. “So I just wanted to give you this,” he gestured to the bowl, “some stew. Hope you like wild—”

Shards of metal cut through his skull in a burst. Zuko couldn’t hold back a gasp as he shut his eyes tight, hissing through clenched teeth. 

The bowl clinked against the floor to Zuko’s right. “You okay, man?”

People _talking_ always hurt when his head was this bad. He had braced for the pain of questioning, but Sokka’s voice was… gentle. It soothed the ache like a balm. 

He clenched his fists. If Zuko had learned anything, it was that the kindness of an enemy is nothing but a lie. 

Sokka wasn’t Uncle. He wasn’t Mai.

“My sister’s a healer, you know,” he continued, as sweet as honey, only inches away. “She’s intimidating, I’ll give you that, but if you’re injured she can fix you right up.”

Zuko lifted a hand to his forehead, hoping it would shield him from Sokka’s inspecting gaze. He was sick of being watched. 

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” Sokka huffed, rich with sarcasm.

Zuko rubbed his thumb into his temple. “Thanks for the stew.”

“Hey, you need to eat. _And_ you need to sleep,” he said, his clothes shuffling as he stood back up. Zuko’s head throbbed as he tried to focus on Sokka’s voice beyond the blinding reds exploding behind his eyelids. “I’ll show you to your room and you can sleep this off, whatever it is.”

He peeked his eyes open, wincing through the dim light as Sokka, for the second time that day, outstretched a hand towards him. 

He wouldn’t take it.

He couldn’t. The scales were too out of balance already. Zuko had come to the Western Air Temple to trick him— a co-conspirator of the Avatar, an enemy to the Fire Nation. 

But when Sokka had saved his life, that changed. 

It didn’t matter that he only saved him to use as a bargaining chip to save his father. Sokka saved Zuko’s life, so now, he _owed_ him. He couldn’t change the plan, but on his honor, he couldn’t accept any more help.

Grimacing, Zuko pushed himself to his feet. When Sokka reached down to collect his things, he grabbed the bowl and slung his pack over his shoulder with half-open eyes. Sokka sighed obnoxiously and motioned him forward. 

As Zuko walked blindly, guided by the sound of Sokka’s light footsteps, his headache dulled— maybe enough to get his appetite back. Maybe enough to sleep through to sunrise without nightmares. 

“So,” Sokka said, stopping by a doorway. “Home sweet home, I guess! Or, you know, for now.”

The bedroom was gray, empty, and small— smaller than the first he and Uncle had stayed at in the Earth Kingdom.

“Unpack? Breakfast, soon? Unfortunately. Um…”

Zuko peered over his shoulder at Sokka, leaning against the doorframe, a hand rubbing at the back of his neck. An undefinable heat ignited behind his sternum.

“Goodnight, and uh, welcome aboard?” 

Desperate for a distraction, Zuko threw his pack on the bed and perched against the edge, finally bringing the bowl to his lips. The stew was richer than he expected, saltier. It wasn’t the palace kitchen’s komodo chicken, but he gulped it down cold like it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.

Sokka cleared his throat. The room dimmed as he began to pull the door shut. Zuko’s heart raced, overcome by the sense that they weren’t finished yet. That the sun would refuse to rise until he expressed his gratitude. 

“Thank you,” Zuko said, struggling through the words. After a moment, Sokka’s hand wrapped around the side of the door as he peeked back inside.

“Yeah, buddy,” Sokka rasped. “Of course.”

“For saving me earlier,” he said, compelled to clarify, to make sure Sokka truly heard him, “and for the stew.”

“Yeah.”

The knot in his chest unraveled. Sokka’s silhouette burned in his mind’s eye as he blinked down into the bowl, exhaustion slamming into him like komodo rhino. 

But as soon as the door shut, Sokka let out a muffled yelp. Zuko tensed when Katara’s voice joined in with his frantic whispering.

He ran his hands anxiously through his hair. Squinting through the moonlight, he set the bowl on the side table and pulled the painting of Uncle from his pack to lean up against it. If Uncle was here, he’d know what to do.

_No._ Zuko wrung his hands. _Uncle would be ashamed that I was here at all._

He jumped as the door creaked open, Katara’s shadow bleeding across the room. She leaned against the doorframe, but unlike Sokka, she stood with her arms crossed, glaring at him like she’d take his life without a second thought. 

And if she did, Zuko wouldn’t blame her.

“You might have everyone else here buying your…transformation,” she hissed, her voice crawling up under his skin, “but you and I both know you’ve struggled with doing the right thing in the past.”

He couldn’t move. Katara stepped into the moonlight, the scowl across her face deepening as she approached his bedside.

“So let me tell you something, right now.” She stood over him, and he swallowed and forced himself to meet her eyes, furious as the sea. "You make one step backward, one slip-up, give me _one_ reason to think you might hurt Aang, and you won’t have to worry about your ‘destiny’ anymore.” 

Clouds shielded the moon, darkening the room as she spoke.

“Because I’ll make sure your destiny ends right then and there,” she swore. “Permanently.”

* * *

A scream ripped through the darkness of the trees. Toph huddled in the dirt, shaking as she cradled her blistering feet.

“You!” she shouted, tears bubbling at the edges of her foggy eyes. “You’re a monster!”

_I’m sorry!_ Zuko shouted, but the sound caught in his throat, the air from his lungs passing through like a rush of wind. _It was an accident!_

Toph crawled into the shadows. He sprinted towards the treeline, tripping over his feet. The bushes morphed into vines that slithered up his legs, squeezing until he was pulled from the ground.

The canyon opened up below him, the vine cold and slippery in his palms. He struggled to tighten his grip and dirt bounced off his cheeks, crumbling from the outcrop above. 

A hand appeared, reaching out towards him.

_Sokka?_

Zuko’s heart raced so fast he worried it would tear itself from his chest. He squinted at the hand, and fabric fell over the arm.

Red.

“Now I know that banishment is far too merciful a penalty for treason,” his father’s voice boomed around him, shaking the vine further loose from the earth.

_No._

“You will learn respect,” his father said as he pressed his hand over Zuko’s unscarred eye. The world went dark.

“And suffering will be your—”

Zuko shot up from bed, gasping as he strained to catch his breath. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. He pressed his palms against his eye sockets, flinching when they came away wet. 

As he lied back down, the Fire Nation banner hanging over his father’s Agni Kai arena invaded his vision in reds and golds. He trembled as another wave of tears fell down his cheeks. He scrubbed them away and groaned. Maybe trying to sleep wasn’t worth it. Maybe he should—

“Zuko?”

_ Sokka. _

Zuko froze for a moment before throwing himself into the pillow and pulling the thin sheet up to his shoulders. His traitorous body shook as he stared at the wall with clenched teeth, praying that Sokka would just leave. Forget this ever happened.

“Sorry,” Sokka said instead. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’m fine.”

Zuko held his breath, waiting for the sound of footsteps leaving the bedroom. They didn’t. Unsure of what to do, he squeezed his eyes closed—

_Please, Uncle, can I have a light? Please, Uncle! I can’t—_

His eyes shot back open, and he cursed to himself as a tear rolled salty across his lips.

“You okay, man?” Sokka asked hesitantly.

“I told you I’m _fine_ ,” he hissed, but the tremors running through his body also ran through his words. Agni, he couldn’t stop. His stomach turned at the sign of weakness. 

Even Mai hadn’t seen him like this. On bad nights, he always escaped to his own bedroom after she fell asleep. He never had that luxury with Uncle; even on the warship, their rooms shared a wall. He would shake him out of his trances, try and talk him down— but after a lot of upended tables and shattered tea sets, even Uncle stayed out of it. 

And now, this _,_ this _peasant_ thought he could, what? Comfort him? Act like just because he saved his life, they were friends? This wasn’t Love Amongst the Dragons. It was _real_ _life_. Just because he acted like he cared didn’t mean—

“Do you like jasmine tea?”

For the first time in hours, Zuko stilled.

“I only ask because I grabbed a couple branches when I was hunting earlier, and I figured, you know,” Sokka rambled as Zuko turned in the sheet to look at him. His hair was down, out of his usual ponytail, curling a bit towards his cheekbones with the longest pieces grazing his chin. 

Zuko barely heard him; he watched, mesmerized, Sokka’s hands flittering around as he spoke, the motions growing wider and wilder as the seconds passed. 

“Yes,” Zuko said, only noticing he had spoken when Sokka’s hands froze in midair.

“Huh?”

“Yes,” he repeated, heart in his throat, “I would like some jasmine tea.”

“Oh, yeah, of course!” Sokka scratched at the back of his neck. “I could bring a cup of water and a few flowers, and you could, you know,” he wiggled his fingers around an imaginary cup, “heat it?”

The warmth in his gut was almost nauseating. “That would work.”

“Great! I’ll just, uh, go get that then,” Sokka stuttered, pointing a finger at the door as he slid back into the hallway.

As soon as Sokka’s shadow disappeared, the moonlight pooling across the room unhindered, Zuko wondered if he’d made a huge mistake. If allowing himself to take the gift was a curse upon his head. 

If allowing Sokka to save him had damned him for good.

As Sokka returned, his footsteps echoing underneath the crack in the door, Zuko shut his eyes, regulated his breathing. The floral scent of jasmine filled his lungs, thickening when Sokka stopped beside his bedside. 

Zuko drove every wayward thought from his mind. 

When this was all over, he would return to Caldera, to his rightful place as Prince of the Fire Nation. He would rule at his father’s right hand, his honor restored, the Avatar defeated.

He thought of Mai, of never leaving her side. He thought of visiting his Uncle again. 

He would not think of Sokka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *john mulaney voice* and THEN he DID!
> 
> come visit me on tumblr, also @paintedlight <3


	14. Izumi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone!! if you're following along with my life notes- interviews went well <3 thanks for all the encouragement!
> 
> ALSO PSA I added a tag. There is a brief suicide mention in this chapter, of a character in a story Zuko tells. If you'd like to skip it, in the second section of text, skip to the line "Do you like the fish?"
> 
> I hope you all enjoy the cute Aang & Zuko content + the detailed Handmaiden referencing !

The Avatar’s name was Aang. 

Zuko already knew that. He’d heard Katara scream the name when Aang had fallen off his warship a year ago, countless times in other battles, and most recently, as Azula had directed lightning straight for the boy’s heart. The name hadn’t stuck in his mind, for some reason. Or maybe he had always known the reason. 

Aang was just a kid.

He pushed down the shame building in his chest as Aang led him, nearly skipping, to the expansive stone balcony of an air temple. It was in pristine shape, a true architectural marvel. You wouldn’t have known it had been uninhabited for a hundred years if not for the ivy snaking across the tiles and up the walls. 

“Well, here we are!” Aang said, punching his glider like a staff against the ground. “Will this work for my training, Sifu Hotman?”

“Sifu—” Zuko sputtered. “What did you just call me?”

“Sifu Hotman?” He balanced his glider against the wall. “I think the name speaks for itself.”

“Uh,” Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose, waiting for the familiar prickle of a headache. Surprisingly, the pain didn’t come. “I— Okay.”

“So, what should I do first?” Aang held his clasped hands in front of his torso, tense. He barely blinked, his gray eyes large and owlish.

This was going to be a long week.

“I… know you’re nervous,” Zuko said, half-guessing, but knew he had hit the mark when Aang swallowed and nodded quickly. Okay. “Remember, firebending in itself is not something to fear.”

Aang exhaled and nodded again. 

Uncle had repeated that phrase to him, day after day, following the Agni Kai. It helped. It had also taken forever to help, and _that_ was what he was counting on. 

He couldn’t sabotage the Avatar’s training, but he _could_ waste his time.

“But if you don’t respect it,” Zuko squinted as Aang shook before him, “it’ll chew you up and spit you out like an angry komodo rhino!”

Aang yelped and scrambled back. 

Zuko grinned to himself as he bent down to snap a leaf from a vine by his feet. Of all his trainings, he had hated this one the most. Standing, he presented the leaf to Aang to take, expecting a look of confusion when Aang slouched and groaned at the sky like it had offended him.

“The leaf thing again?” Aang whined, snatching the leaf from Zuko’s grasp. “For some reason, I didn’t expect you to have the same methods as Jeong Jeong.”

“As—” Zuko started, thoughts coming to a standstill again. How in Agni’s name had the Avatar escaped both he and the Fire Nation forces, while being trained by— “Jeong Jeong? The _war criminal_?”

Aang lifted a shoulder and pinched the sides of the leaf. “Is he really a war criminal if he deserted the _Fire Nation_?”

Zuko ground his teeth together, fire building at his wrists. He spun away from the Avatar and gripped the stone barrier of the balcony.

“If you know what you’re doing,” he huffed, “do it.”

“Yes, Sifu Hotman.”

“Stop calling me that.”

The tiny crackle of a flame lit behind him. The flow of energy pulsed even as he looked over the temple grounds, the midday sun shining like a beacon into the russet clay of the canyon. Besides the assassin’s destruction, everything looked exactly the same as it had five years ago.

Everything was so different now.

He had found the Avatar, and he was right behind him.

“Uh, Zuko?”

“What?” he snapped, turning to find Aang wide-eyed, the flame in the center of the leaf bulging slightly.

“I just was wondering if we could talk while I do this!” he said, smiling in a way that looked painfully forced. “You know, get to know each other?”

Zuko glanced down at the leaf, the flame licking close to the edge, then back up at Aang.

Aang straightened and looked through the hole. “Ahhh!” he screeched, squinting hard at the flame until it stopped, only the outer edges of the leaf remaining.

He snorted. “Does that answer your question?”

“Do I need a new one?”

“No.”

“Uh, okay!”

Zuko rolled his eyes and turned back to the canyon. It was calming— the clouds floating by unhurried, the group’s winged lemur chasing a flock of birds in loops over the ravine. From here, he could see the damage the assassin had dealt to the fountain. The shattered stone tiles and ceiling were a mess, but it was nothing that couldn’t be restored. Structurally, the temple seemed to have held up well.

Through the half-collapsed ceiling of the courtyard, he could see all the way onto the terrace, the tiny blue figures of Sokka and Katara standing at the edge.

Zuko’s heart pounded in his chest. _Last night…_

The image of Sokka in the doorframe had branded itself into his memory. His hair, messy and dark, swung across his cheekbones as he talked. He was barefoot, heaving like he had run to check on him. His wraps still sheathed his forearms, wrapping from his elbow to his knuckles. 

He asked if he was okay. He brought jasmine to his bedside. 

And Zuko may have fallen back to sleep before Sokka had left. He wasn’t sure. But he _was_ sure he hadn’t had another nightmare.

And wasn’t that a funny coincidence— because whatever Sokka was doing, it was all a deception. A game. 

A _war._

His knuckles turned white as he gripped the stone, rough against his palms. How _dare_ Sokka act like he gave a single shit about him? Mai wasn’t paying him to play nice. He must be messing with him, lying for fun— like Azula. 

He must be some sort of sadist. 

“Beautiful, isn’t she?”

Zuko flinched and whipped his head around to find Aang standing right beside him, the leaf still intact between his fingers. 

“No! I mean—” He swallowed, his mouth as dry as ash. “I’m not—”

“No?” Aang said, anger bleeding slowly into his tone as the leaf was consumed, a small black cloud hovering in its place. “You’re wrong. Katara is beautiful, and powerful, and fights for the good of—”

“I just mean I wasn’t looking at her!”

“Then what were you looking at?”

Zuko hesitated, realizing too late that he could have mentioned the clouds, or the lemur, or literally _anything_ before Aang’s scowl softened, twisting into a mischievous grin. 

“ _Sokka?_ ”

“No! I—” Zuko growled, wanting to run back into the woods to hide the heat that crawled up his neck. “I was just looking at the temple!”

“I should let you know that Sokka might have a girlfriend,” Aang continued on, ignoring his protests, “but you should still talk to him about it. I’m sure you could work something out!”

“I wasn’t looking at Sokka!” He shouted as his nails dug hot into his palms. “And you—” he pointed a finger inches from Aang’s nose. He raised his hands and backed up a step. “You— you burnt your leaf!”

Aang’s eyes bulged as he looked down at the empty space between his hands. He shrugged bashfully, forcing a smile. “Oops?” 

“That’s it.” Zuko stomped over to the middle of the balcony. “Sit.”

He sat in a quarter lotus, waiting for Aang to sit across from him as a mirror. As soon as they were both situated, he shut his eyes. Focused. The wind whistled softly as he breathed in, out, in— 

“Are we meditating?” Aang whispered.

“Yes.”

“I already know how to meditate. I’m a monk.”

“I know,” Zuko hissed. “But fire comes from the breath.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means what it says.” 

He didn’t know what it meant, but Uncle said it all the time— even when he wasn’t practicing his breath of fire— so it had to mean _something_.

“Okay,” Aang said, and finally, _finally_ , shut up.

Zuko lost track of time as he breathed. In the mornings, he tracked his meditation by the rising of the sun, following Agni’s path to the horizon. But in the middle of the day, the light was everywhere. He was energized, over-saturated. Sun-drunk.

“Hey, jerks!”

His eyes shot open just as Sokka and Katara stepped onto the balcony, and he blinked against the daylight. They were fully armed, and Sokka held an apple core up from his crossed arms.

“Mind if I watch you two _jerks_ do your _jerk_ bending?”

Zuko’s chi rolled through his body as angrily as the sea during typhoon season. The lopsided grin, the stupid joke— Sokka was a lot of things, but more than anything, he was infuriating. 

“Get out of here!” Zuko bellowed, pointing back to the stairs before he had even realized he had stood up.

“Okay, take it easy,” Sokka said as Katara snickered beside him. He tossed the apple core off of the balcony. “I was just kidding around. Katara and I just wanted to let you know we’re going fishing.”

“We should be back in a few hours,” she warned, her jaw set as her gaze moved beside him, to Aang, and back. He swallowed against her glare.

“We’ll be okay, Katara!” Aang insisted. “Isn’t that right, Sifu Hotman?”

Zuko balled his fists and groaned. “I told you to stop calling me that!”

“I don’t know,” Sokka said, and Zuko turned back just in time to see his smirk, “I think it fits.”

“I said the same thing!” Aang said, and from the corner of his eye, Zuko saw his arms flinging around.

But Sokka had gone silent, wide-eyed and scattered, a deep blush reddening his cheeks. Zuko’s stomach churned.

He was infuriating. 

Confusing. Sokka kicked at a pebble on the ground, and it bounced across the stone. The blush spread down past the collar of his tunic. He sighed, rubbed at the back of his neck, and looked straight into Zuko’s eyes, and— _Agni—_ he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. 

Seconds passed and he still couldn’t move and Sokka wouldn’t look away, his mouth opened slightly, his eyebrows pinched in thought. Zuko wanted to run. To _fight_.

Panic pulsed in his veins. Something was wrong with him.

What was wrong with him?

Fire beat against his chest as Katara yanked at Sokka’s sleeve, breaking the trance and dragging him back across the tiles. 

Zuko sucked in a burning breath. He exhaled, unsteady, as he returned to quarter lotus, watching for the siblings’ heads to disappear down the stairs.

“So,” Aang poked his knee, “Sokka?”

“Shut up,” he hissed, and shut his eyes against the light.

* * *

Zuko’s mother had always been a storyteller. She was especially fond of love stories— they saw Love Amongst the Dragons every summer on Ember Island— but sometimes, they took a different turn.

Sometimes, they were lessons.

Once, his mother said, there was a little girl named Izumi. Izumi lived in a big house— so big, it could have been a palace. Her father was a wealthy general, and her mother had died while giving birth to her. 

One dark day, her father died in the war. His final wish was to pass down his inheritance to his only daughter.

And so Izumi was raised by her aunt and uncle until she was old enough to manage the inheritance on her own. Her aunt was kind, beautiful, intelligent. She taught Izumi to paint, to conduct herself among the nobility. The uncle, however, was a cruel man, and very greedy. His punishments were extreme, and he did not allow her to play with any other children.

The time came when Izumi was old enough to learn to read. Her aunt was a patient teacher, and spent even more time with her than she had before. 

One day, while practicing writing her name, the uncle entered the room. Her aunt began to sweat— her cheeks turned pink, her breathing labored. Izumi asked if she was alright. The aunt assured her that everything was fine, and told her to get back to her writing.

But from then on, her aunt showed up less and less. When she would not show up for her readings, the uncle would teach her instead.

“Where is she?” Izumi would ask.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” the uncle said, his tongue stained black with ink. “Your aunt is going mad.”

Izumi was so worried. Every time she would see her aunt, she would complain of headaches, constantly blotting the sweat from her forehead with a cloth.

A few weeks later, the maids shuffled Izumi out of her room right as the sun rose. They pushed her into the gardens, up to the cherry blossom tree, where her aunt’s body swung, dead, from a rope.

Everyone said her aunt went mad, but Izumi still could not believe it. Through her grief, she could not help but notice that her uncle had hardly mourned. Deep in her heart, she knew the truth that _somehow_ her uncle was responsible for her aunt’s death. 

For years, she read, book after book, until she was given a book on ancient medicine and caregiving. She sped through the text, and finally came across a chapter on identifying cause of death. As she read, she learned that her aunt had not been hung— her aunt’s lips had been blue, her skin a pale gray. 

Her aunt had been drowned.

Izumi kept this all to herself, until one night, a group of nobleman came over for dinner. She waited and waited until the opportune moment, and when that moment arrived, she exposed her uncle for his crimes, and he was brought to justice. 

Because she trusted her gut, she exposed her uncle for who he was.

Staring through the flames of the fire pit at Katara, Zuko wondered if _she_ was Izumi.

If _he_ was the uncle.

“Do you like the fish?”

Zuko swallowed bile as Aang grinned up at him.

“Uh—” He pinched a piece of filet from his bowl and tossed it into his mouth. It practically melted on his tongue— salty, buttery, just enough char— a little cool from how long he had zoned out, transfixed by the flames. “Mm,” he hummed in appreciation, and Aang beamed.

“It’s blue trout,” he explained before tipping his bowl back, finishing off his mushroom broth. “I’m vegetarian, so I don’t eat fish, but everyone says Katara is the best cook! Sokka’s a close second, though,” he said with a wink.

“Oh.” Zuko coughed into his hand, heat stirring uncomfortably in his stomach. He stuffed another bite of trout through his lips so he wouldn’t be expected to say anything else.

“He seems pretty distracted tonight,” Aang went on, not noticing his discomfort, or at least ignoring it. “Maybe you should go talk to him!”

“Maybe he shouldn’t,” Katara growled from across the fire, flipping the fish on her cooking stone. It spun once in the air before landing with a hiss.

“Or, maybe you should wait until another time,” Aang shrugged apologetically.

Sokka _was_ being standoffish. When, despite Zuko’s protesting, Aang had dragged him up to the terrace and pulled him down beside him in the group circle, Sokka had never joined. While Teo, Haru, and The Duke introduced themselves and Toph picked on him, Sokka sat rigidly in the shadows, just far enough from the fire pit to be outside of the group circle and out of the light. 

Sokka’s boomerang sat unsheathed beside him, where he picked at his own bowl of fish. Even from there, Zuko could see the creases in his forehead as he grimaced. It itched under his skin. 

He didn’t know if he wanted him to move closer or to stay shrouded in the dark.

“So, Sparky,” Toph said, mouth full, from her seat on a stone a pace away, “we’ve talked about it, and decided—”

“—not unanimously,” Katara added under her breath.

“And _we decided_ ,” Toph continued, “that you should sleep in the atrium with us tonight. Safety in numbers and all that.”

Zuko dizzied, the familiar abyss of guilt opening beneath his feet. “I—”

“You should do it, Zuko,” Aang said. “It’s been a tough couple of days. I don’t think anyone should be alone after all that happened.”

He started sinking, and panic hit his muscles so hard he stood without warning. “I— I need to—” he stuttered, backing away from the fire pit, from the group of friends, “I need to get my stuff.”

He sped down the stairs, across the courtyard, and into the living quarters, the air missing from his lungs as if Aang himself had taken it. These people— they were so _good_. Like Song and her mother. They were kind to strangers— they were kind to _him._

And in return, he was going to steal more than an ostrich horse.

Zuko slammed the door shut as soon as he entered the bedroom, pacing back and forth, yanking at the long strands of his hair until it stung. They were so good, so honorable, and he—

His bag laid open at his feet, the clay tea set spilling out across the floor. Stopping in his tracks, he bent down and gently set the pot and teacups beside the bundle of jasmine. As the moonlight puddled over the desk, Zuko realized that, for all his taking, he did have something to give.

It wasn’t much. But it was an offering. A ritual of respect.

An apology.

But as he harvested the flowers for the tea, the petals bruised beneath his fingers, the delicate white blossoms singed black at the edges as his trembling hands dropped them into the teapot. He sighed and hung his head. Uncle would not approve.

Even in the little things, Zuko was so _so_ bad at being good.

* * *

Zuko held his breath as he kneeled before Sokka, only two teacups remaining on the tray. Sokka didn’t look up, but his jaw tensed as Zuko’s shadow fell over him. Light from the fire jumped around the surface of the tea.

“Hey,” Sokka rasped, his eyes darting around for a moment before lingering on the two cups. “Can I talk to you for a second?” 

Ignoring the tea, Sokka lept from his seat and headed into the shadows at the edge of the terrace. Anxiety buzzed under Zuko’s skin as he set down the tray and stood to follow. He was already a few paces away, venturing down a long hall lined with columns, right by the mouth of the atrium. His laid-back facade was gone, his gait tense and stubborn, even in the dark. 

Zuko squinted at the back of his head. “So, what’s up?”

“If someone was captured by the Fire Nation,” he asked, quiet enough not to catch an echo, “where would they be taken?”

“What do you mean?” Zuko hesitated. There’s no way Sokka was asking about the Boiling Rock— it was too early. Mai told him to wait five days. 

He swallowed the shock and snapped back into character. “Who was captured?” 

Sokka stared at the ground, his leather-wrapped hands balling into fists. “When the invasion plan failed, some of our troops were taken. I just—” He shook his head and turned to face him, his expression drained. “I just want to know where they might be.”

His irises were nearly black in the shadows, expansive and pleading. Zuko’s stomach lurched. He knew acting— Sokka wasn’t acting. 

He was desperate.

_He has no idea—_ Zuko’s inner fire pushed against his ribcage, pushed through his shoulders, down his arms. Took over. He was out of control, he was—

“I…” Zuko, against his will, whispered, “I can’t tell you.” 

_Fuck._

“What?” Sokka snapped. “Why not?” 

Shadows took shape around them, filling the space a man would fill. A soldier. A group of soldiers. his father at the helm. Zuko’s heart pounded in his ears. The shadows undulated around the columns, across the stone. 

If he didn’t go through with the plan, they’d be after him. He would have to leave the Avatar, leave Mai— he would have to go into hiding. Maybe forever.

For some reason, that didn’t seem to matter.

“Trust me,” he swore, his own voice betraying him, “knowing will just make you feel worse.”

Zuko spun back towards the fire, his future shape-shifting into a life he didn’t recognize. It flew by, and he watched like a bystander, out-of-body, floating until a hand landed heavy on his shoulder. His inner fire lept towards the contact, licking at the touch until he felt the cool night wind against his skin again, the stone beneath his feet again.

“It’s my dad. He was captured too,” Sokka said, his voice broken, the shards cutting at Zuko’s fragmented will. “I need to know what I put him through.”

_Please don’t do this._ Zuko clenched his jaw, forcing his mouth shut. _Please don’t make me do this._ His lips loosened when Sokka tightened his grip, his shoulder burning hot beneath his grasp.

“It’s not good, Sokka,” he whispered, begging him to just take the bait. To abandon the plan.

He would be hunted, but he’s been hunted before. He’s gone into hiding. He’s lost everything, water slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he held on.

“ _Please_.”

Zuko grimaced and shrugged the hand loose from his shoulder. Frigid air replaced the warmth as soon as it fell away. He shivered, Mai’s face flashing before him, back to when she had smiled and wrapped him in a blanket.

_Everything can go back to normal,_ she promised. _You can come back home._

Zuko sighed and closed his eyes. “My guess is, they were taken to the Boiling Rock. It’s the highest security prison in the Fire Nation,” he said, opening his eyes to find Sokka’s, wide and weary. "It’s on an island in the middle of a boiling lake. It’s inescapable.”

Nausea rolled in Zuko’s gut as Sokka drug a hand down his face. “So where is this place?”

Zuko told him. And before Agni kissed the horizon, they were halfway there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 bois chillin in a war balloon Zuko POV to be continued!
> 
> come visit me on tumblr @paintedlight if you'd like <3


	15. I Want To Be Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so a LOT has happened. The last of my grad school interviews are done (YAY!), I wrote 2/3 of this chapter, deleted it and rewrote it, reworked a bunch of parts of my overall plot with [mari](https://enbysokka.tumblr.com/) (thank you ily!!!), wrote an entire outline for Love Amongst the Dragons (yes I am writing my version of it!! I'll link it here when it's done), and FINALLY the chapter is here!!
> 
> also, I am TRASH a tagging. I had forgotten to add child abuse even though I've had Zuko and Ozai scenes. If you notice anything I forgot or you would like me to add, please let me know! Never feel bad about it. I'd rather you all be comfy and prepared.
> 
> the chapter title is from the song I Want To Be Well by Sufjan Stevens. It's chaotic and wild, so if you like weird experimental songs give it a listen <3
> 
> I hope you enjoy!!

The silence would be a relief if Sokka would just _stop staring_.

Zuko’s head spun as he squinted into the burner, the heat warming his cheeks. The air seemed thin— the balloon must have drifted too high. His stomach churned and he glanced over just as Sokka opened his mouth.

“ _What?_ ” he barked.

“What?” Sokka’s widened eyes glowed blue in the moonlight. “Oh, I just,” he stammered as he messed with the wire rope that connected the basket and balloon. “You know, a friend of mine actually designed these war balloons!”

Zuko relaxed. Finally, a topic that wasn’t _him_. “No kidding?”

“Yup!” He balanced an ankle on his knee and leaned against the basket, hands clasped behind his head. “A balloon… but for war.”

Zuko swallowed and turned back to the fire. Contained by the burner, the flames thundered, spiraling heavenwards like smoke from a volcano. 

His jaw ached as he released another fireball. “If there’s one thing my dad’s good at, it’s war.”

“Yeah, it seems to run in the family.”

“Hey, hold on!” Zuko slammed the burner shut, the heat on his face immediately replaced by frigid night air. The back of his throat burned, tasting faintly of charcoal. “Not everyone in my family is like that!”

“I know, I know.” Sokka brushed him off, seemingly unconcerned with the dangerous heat building in the center of Zuko’s palms as he leaned against his hands and closed his eyes. "You’ve _changed._ ” Zuko tensed at the sarcastic tilt of his voice. “Sure.”

Zuko touched the metal edge of the burner door. It glowed hot from the fire, the sting building in his fingertips. The ocean far below hummed, constant, and he thought of Uncle. He was a gluttonous old man, but he had never let him down. He tried to help him, to make him better.

And all it got him was a prison cell, where he was fed scraps, all alone except for the inconsistent visits of the spoiled nephew that put him there.

Zuko’s throat constricted. Sokka was wrong.

He hadn’t changed. 

“I meant my uncle,” Zuko rasped. “He was more of a father to me, and I really let him down.” 

He could feel Sokka watching him. Searching, like Mai. His heart raced behind his sternum, an unnamable fury writhing in his gut. 

Sokka didn’t know him. He didn’t know anything. Not about Mai, not about him or his family. 

But somehow, Sokka was clever enough to keep him talking. Zuko had answered all of Sokka’s ridiculous questions— about his clothes, his favorite foods, his hair. If he wasn’t the only one aboard able to keep the burner going, he would have suspected that he’d been poisoned, drugged into compliance with some sort of truth potion.

It was dangerous. He needed a safeguard. 

“Listen, I know that you don’t trust me,” he said, guilt eating his insides as Sokka nodded for him to continue, open and trusting, “and I— I get it, but we’re walking into a really dangerous situation. When we get there, you can hate me all you want, I don’t care,” he swallowed again— _Agni_ , his mouth was dry— “but _don’t_ lie to me.”

Sokka nodded quickly. “Okay, okay,” he promised, “I won’t.” 

Zuko exhaled and turned back to the flames. 

It would be fine. Like Mai said— he would through this, and everything would go back to how it was. It could be better, she’d said, but he couldn’t imagine what that would be like, what _better_ could even— 

“And I think your uncle would be proud of you,” Sokka spoke, softly, into the dark. “Leaving your home to come help us? That’s hard.”

The words struck him in the chest. The ache cut so deep he struggled to breathe enough to speak again. 

“It wasn’t _that_ hard.”

“Really? You didn’t leave behind anyone you cared about?”

“Well, I did have a…a girlfriend.” A sense of calm doused the uneasiness at his core, clumsy as the word always felt in his mouth. “Mai.”

“That gloomy girl who sighs a lot?” Sokka leaned towards him, grinning. "You know, now that I think about it, she talked about you once.”

Zuko paused. If Sokka was this bad at keeping secrets, their time in prison may be more dangerous than they had planned. “You’ve met Mai?” 

“No, I’ve not—” he scrambled, eyes bulging as he scratched at the back of his neck. “Uh, it was back in the Earth Kingdom? Her friend jabbed me, and I couldn’t move for like half an hour.” 

Zuko’s stomach dropped. “Oh, yeah, that’s— that’s Ty Lee.” 

Mai… talked about him?

What could she have said? She was quiet, private. Even if she had to convince Sokka they were desperately in love to validate the deal, she wouldn’t wax poetic about him. Much less to the enemy!

Restless, he dug his thumb into the meat of his palm. He did _not_ want to hear what Mai had said. It couldn’t be good.

“What was she saying?” he asked anyway.

“Um,” Sokka hesitated, transfixed in the direction of Zuko’s wringing hands, “she said, ’Every night in bed, I think of his assets.’”

Zuko tore his hands to his sides. Why would she— 

“I mean—uh,” Sokka jolted, waving his arms out in front of him, “—your face! ‘Every night in bed, I think of his face!’”

His _face?_

Zuko crossed his arms tight and studied the woven floor of the basket. Nausea sat in his stomach like a stone, growing heavier in Sokka’s silence. 

Unbelievable. Hours of questions, and _now_ he’s silent.

“Well,” Zuko huffed, “what about you?” 

After a few more unbearable moments of silence, he couldn’t take it anymore. He braved himself to look up, and a shadow had fallen over Sokka’s face, puddling beneath his eyes as he sighed, barely audible over the roar of the burner. 

He unrolled his hand wrap halfway, all the way past his wrist, and Zuko’s chest tightened. The sarashi had impressed peaks and valleys into his skin. The veins bulged as he made a fist, his knuckles sharp. When the remaining bit of fabric fell slack against his forearm, he pulled it taut, practiced as he wound it back around his palm and two of his long fingers.

“My girlfriend turned into the moon,” he said, finally, his voice rubbed raw.

Zuko startled. _The moon?_

He peered over the basket, but he could find only stars, bright against the inky tapestry. She must have hidden behind the clouds— she, Sokka’s girlfriend. 

A deity.

It should have surprised him more than it did.

Those who were loved by Agni were considered blessed among men; he figured those blessed by the moon would be the same. Zuko wondered if she had a name, and how she blessed Sokka before her ascension.

“That’s rough, buddy,” he rasped, and Sokka’s eyes shone like glass. 

He wondered if the blessing was worth it.

Before he could ask, Sokka blinked, hard, and broke away, squinting into the darkness. He crossed his arms, closed in on himself, and pushed himself back against the open curve of the basket.

For some reason, the loss left Zuko floundering. Lost out at sea with the map up in flames.

 _Flames, shit—_ he shot a messy round into the burner, and hot air filled the balloon in a rush. They floated gently upwards.

“Hey, uh, Zuko?” 

He flinched, heat blooming up his neck. “Yeah?”

Sokka had leaned back, arms thrown carelessly up on the sides of the basket, in a way that would seem confident if he wasn’t so twitchy. Zuko swallowed.

“Unless there’s something I can do to help you with the burner, I was thinking I would get some shut-eye?”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Zuko stuttered. “You can! Sleep. Not help with the burner. I— I’ve got it under control.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Sokka said, almost indecipherable around a yawn. The corner of his lip turned up as he wiggled around, settling in his seat. “Wake me when we’re close, will you?”

Zuko closed the burner door, gently this time, and nodded. “Sure.”

Only minutes had passed when Sokka’s breathing evened out. Zuko allowed himself a glance. Light spotted his vision from staring, unblinking, into the fire, but once it cleared and refocused, he was stunned with the realization—

Sokka had fallen asleep in front of him.

He was right there, mouth ajar, his neck crooked sideways against the wood. The moonlight danced across his cheeks, against the crest of his cheekbone, above the curve of his jaw. Trusting— vulnerable and alone, with _him._

For the first time since they left the temple, Zuko shivered. And when he reopened the burner, he could barely feel the heat.

* * *

“Hey,” Sokka wheezed behind him, “do you need a nap or something?”

Zuko shuffled through the piles of maroon fabric, folding clothes over his forearm until he had two full sets. He wasn’t tired. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, leftover from their crash-landing by the prison. 

He squatted to inspect the socks. “Nah. I don’t sleep much, anyway.”

“You sure? I could keep watch.”

“They should give us a spot in the guards’ quarters,” he explained, rising to dump the stack of clothes into Sokka’s arms. “Unless we’re caught, we’ll have cots by tonight.”

Zuko untied his robe, pulled the tunic over his head, and breathed in the humid air as his clothes plopped on the floor. A weight lifted from his chest.

In guard uniforms, they would be all but invisible.

The helmet should cover most of his face. If no one stood too close, it should hide the scar almost as well as the Blue Spirit mask. He yanked off his boots and crouched to pull on the new pair of socks, the unfamiliar fabric soothing his nerves with the promise of anonymity. 

Wearing a mask, being invisible— it was intoxicating. Until they were caught on the other side of his blades, people didn’t look at him in fear, or in disappointment. People didn’t look at him at all. 

When he was the Blue Spirit, he wasn’t the Prince. He wasn’t even a firebender.

Relief settled into his bones. Reaching for the second sock, Zuko paused when a pair of shorts landed in a heap, discarded on the floor beside his robe.

“You… know you have to wear that,” he said as he unrolled the sock just underneath his kneecap. “It’s flame retardant. And trust me, you don’t want to get burned.” 

He picked the shorts off the ground and held them out. Sokka gaped down at him, unmoving, a blush erupting across his cheeks.

Zuko’s chi flared. _What is he doing?_ He shook the shorts a little, burning impatient for Sokka to just _do_ something. It wasn’t like they had a bunch of time! 

Sokka flinched, like he remembered where he was, and finally ripped the shorts from his grip. Zuko grumbled as he picked out the guards— for both of them, since Sokka apparently changes clothes slower than Uncle takes baths.

Thankfully, Sokka finished changing by the time he collected the armor.

“These are the shin guards, the shoulder guards,” Zuko listed as he passed them off, “and this piece fits over your head, but you have to—”

The necklace.

“What?” Sokka licked his lips.

Zuko blanched. “The necklace.” He pointed at the ivory choker, stark white against the tawny skin of Sokka’s neck. “It’s not protocol. You’ll have to take it off.”

Sokka sighed and reached behind his neck. His tongue poked out the corner of his mouth as he fiddled with the necklace until it loosened. The knot released, and rather than tossing it with the sarashi on his neatly folded pile of clothes, Sokka dangled it out in front of him. Like he expected him to take it.

“Here,” he said, waving the strand towards Zuko’s clenched fists. “Hold this!”

He unfurled his hand, trembling slightly as Sokka dropped the necklace carelessly into his palm. The pieces of bone were still warm from being pressed against Sokka’s skin. His stomach leapt to his throat.

“Sokka, I—” 

Sokka ignored him and bent down to pick up his clothes. “We should find somewhere safe to keep all this,” he said, tapping his chin as he squinted around the room. 

The necklace stung against his palm like acid. 

Sokka wouldn’t be back. 

If he entrusted Zuko with hiding his clothes, his sword, his necklace, he would lose everything. He _was_ losing everything.

Bile rose in Zuko’s throat. The stories of his nation rushed back to him— the toppled empires, the wings of the Fire Nation palace stacked with artifacts. The snowy village of the Southern Water Tribe, speckled with ash as the metal bow of his ship rammed through their packed-ice walls. The Western Air Temple, a dusty, vine-laced city inhabited only by ghosts.

And now, a whale-ivory necklace.

“Zuko?” Sokka said, far away, as though in a dream.

How could he do this— all of this? When he tried to envision the plan, he couldn’t make it to the end. His imagination only took him forward a few minutes from now, into the abyss on the other side of the door. 

If Uncle were here, he would ask what he always asked. The questions Zuko could never honestly answer.

_Who are you? And what do you want?_

“Zuko?” Sokka said, as if it wasn’t the first time he’d said it.

“Uh, what?”

“Do you think that vent up there would open?” He pointed above Zuko’s head. “We could probably stuff all this inside for now.”

Sokka stuffed everything but his sword inside his pack as Zuko climbed the iron shelving up to the ceiling. The vent unlatched easily. He handed the necklace to Sokka, who slid it in his pack before handing everything back to him. It seemed heavier than it was.

As he slid the pack into the vent, resting the sword— a jet black blade, well-balanced— on top, he made his decision. 

He would make sure Sokka got it all back. He wasn’t sure how— maybe he could bring it back to his cell once he was captured, or hide it somewhere accessible in the prison, tell Sokka where to find it all— but Sokka wouldn’t lose this. Not on top of everything else.

It wasn’t enough, he knew that. But it was all he could give. 

“For safekeeping,” Zuko muttered, retightened the bolts, and leapt to the hard ground.

* * *

It had been an hour, but Zuko’s hands hadn’t stopped shaking. An hour since they were called to the courtyard, dense with prisoners and morning fog. An hour since Chit Sang, a prisoner, refused to fight a guard in an Agni Kai. An hour since Sokka’s grip around his arm had grounded him as the golden dragon glinted harshly in the sun and stripped him bare with its hardened gaze.

He should have expected it. Most arenas had a dragon at one end, on the side of the contender whose soul was closest to Agni. Here, it established the side of the guards.

When he disrespected his father years ago, the dragon sat coiled on the side of the Fire Lord.

Zuko let out a trembling exhale and leaned over the wall, the rough stone digging into his forearms as he squinted through the steam over the lake. This close to the water, the sky was completely obscured by steam, but you could see, dimly, across the water. The volcanic natural barriers of the Boiling Rock were a deep brown, a poisoned soil. It reminded him of home.

Fire nipped beneath the skin of his palms and his head ached. His chi had been restless since that morning, cycling through his body in uncomfortable bursts. Holding a hand out in front of him, Zuko checked the walkway for any guards or stray prisoners. No one was around.

He sighed and let a flame pass through. It hovered, lively and insistent, against the hot wind. His heart rate began to steady out, his breath— 

“Hey, Zuko.”

He jumped and the flame evaporated in an instant. Mai stood to his right, smirking.

“Hey, Mai.” He almost flinched again when he noticed she was wearing gold robes, rather than her usual red.

She rolled her eyes. “My uncle insists I need to add more color to my wardrobe. I don’t know who we’re dressing up for. We’re at a prison.”

“Well, you look nice.”

“Thanks. You look like every single other guard here.”

Zuko shrugged and relit the fire in his palm.

“So…” Mai crossed her arms.

He tensed. “So.”

“I heard you made some friends.”

Aang, Toph, Sokka’s (and even Katara’s) faces, lit up by the light of the bonfire, danced around in his head, and his stomach soured. “I didn’t make any friends.”

“The Water Tribe boy says otherwise.”

The flame extinguished, crushed when Zuko balled his hand into a fist. 

“Sokka doesn’t know anything,” he hissed, the ache in his skull morphing into a dull throb. “And so what if I did? I thought that was the plan. You’re the one who wanted me to befriend the Avatar!”

“You know what I meant, Zuko.” Mai’s lips pinched in a thin line. “Don’t get mad at me for being concerned. You’re losing focus.”

“I’m focusing just fine.”

“Oh really? When’s the last time you ate?”

Zuko rubbed at his wrist. “I’ve been busy.”

Mai glared. “There’s a food hall on the main floor.”

“I _know._ ”

He didn’t know.

“Then go eat something.” She planted her hands on her hips as heat built in Zuko’s chest, clawing around the inside of his ribcage. “You need to keep up your strength. You know what’s at stake here. Your honor and your—“

“We _have_ to imprison Sokka? For my _honor?”_ He threw his arms up, his helmet blocking his fingers from tearing his hair. “Because honestly, Mai, this doesn’t feel very honorable to me!”

“Would you calm down?” she whispered harshly. She wrapped her fingers around his wrists and forced them down to his sides. “It’s too late, Zuko. He’s already here. He’ll be captured soon enough.” She rubbed up and down his arms once before pulling away. “If you really want to help him, you’ll keep with the plan.”

Zuko opened his mouth, closed it again. “How would that _help_ him?”

“Because when we get out of here, and your honor is restored, you’re next in line for the throne. If not—“

“Azula will become the Fire Lord.” _Fuck._

Mai nodded. “I doubt releasing your friend would be high on her list of priorities.”

Zuko swallowed down the lump in his throat. “He’s not my friend.”

Numbness pooled in his limbs as Mai stepped backwards with a small turn of her lips that, for all the years he’d known her, Zuko didn’t know how to interpret. 

“Be careful, Zuko.”

As soon as she turned the corner, Zuko stormed in the opposite direction. For now he was invisible, but he couldn’t hide for long. 

If nothing else, he now had an answer to Uncle’s questions.

He was the Prince of the Fire Nation, in line to be the Fire Lord. It didn’t matter what he wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zuko baby...
> 
> OMG GUYS WE ARE HALFWAY THROUGH THE FIC???? thank you all for sticking around 🥺❤️ The drama will only increase from here 🥰


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